Poland Blames Russia for Starlink Station Fire, but Names No Handler

WARSAW — Poland says it has detained the two men who set fire to a Starlink ground station outside the capital, and its minister coordinating the special services says he has no doubt Moscow sent them. Police describe video, fingerprints and DNA tying the men to the fire; none of the evidence described in public so far ties them to Moscow.

The fire broke out on September 23 at a base station in Wola Krobowska, about 50 kilometres south of Warsaw, and prosecutors said it caused property damage “on a large scale.” The Interior Ministry announced on Monday, at a Warsaw press conference with Tomasz Siemoniak, the minister coordinating the special services, and the national police chief, that Polish police and the Internal Security Agency, working with German police, had detained two Turkish citizens on European arrest warrants issued the week before. Baden-Württemberg criminal police said the arrests took place at the railway station in Nürtingen, Euronews reported. Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński wrote on X that the men face a charge of subversion and sabotage for a foreign intelligence service. In August Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the same agency and police had arrested a Russian citizen accused of planning an assassination in Warsaw on instructions from Russian intelligence, which EH covered as Poland foiling a Kremlin-ordered assassination plot in Warsaw.

The station matters for what passes through it. It belongs to the state-owned operator Exatel and works as an internet hub, Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski said. Ukraine’s military relies on tens of thousands of Starlink terminals, a subscription Poland says it pays for, according to Al Jazeera. The damage is described differently. Euronews reported that the fire hit mainly the power supply, a distribution board and a generator, and that Gawkowski said the station remained operational, while Al Jazeera said the fire destroyed the power system and backup generator and was meant to disrupt services including those used by Ukrainian troops.

The certainty has risen with each statement. The morning after the fire, Gawkowski said “many indications suggest that it fits into this new Russian doctrine of attack,” Euronews reported, while a spokesman for Siemoniak’s office urged caution: “It’s too early to talk about sabotage.” The National Prosecutor’s Office, opening its investigation, said preliminary findings showed arson, spoke of a reasonable suspicion that the perpetrators acted on the orders of Russian special services and said no one had been charged. On Monday Siemoniak went further: “We have no doubt that Russian services are behind this act of sabotage.”

The evidence described so far goes to who lit the fire. Police chief Marek Boroń said investigators had reconstructed the sequence of events and the attackers’ escape from video, fingerprints, DNA traces and travel and border-crossing records, according to the Russian-language service of Euronews. It does not, as described, go to who paid for it. Siemoniak added that Russian services are increasingly turning to people linked to the criminal underworld, which would explain why the men held are Turkish citizens rather than Russian officers. It is also the kind of claim that is hard to test from outside, because a recruited intermediary leaves a chain that runs through people nobody has named. None of the official statements reviewed names a handler, a payment or a contact with a Russian official.

Russia’s embassy in Warsaw did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Al Jazeera reported, and Moscow has dismissed similar accusations in the past as baseless. Germany, whose police made the arrests, has made an attribution of its own this autumn: EH reported on Germany blaming Moscow for the Leipzig airport drone, a case in which the government declined to detail the intelligence behind it. In both cases the public was given the accusation before the evidence.

The picture of who was held is still moving. The ministry’s announcement came on October 12, while the Kyiv Independent put the arrests on October 10. One of the two men reportedly lives in Germany and a deportation order exists for the other, Euronews reported, and Polish authorities want both transferred for prosecution. Euronews, citing the broadcaster RMF FM and unnamed sources, also reported that German police held a woman and a man in Berlin, the woman possibly as a driver for the two. The Polish statements reviewed do not confirm that.

Starlink has been a contested piece of the war’s plumbing. Elon Musk activated it over Ukraine in 2022, days after Russia launched its military operation, at Kyiv’s request, and has since clashed with Ukrainian officials over his views on the war. This year he agreed to switch off thousands of Russian “grey-market” terminals in Ukraine, which Al Jazeera said caused problems for Russian forces. Nothing in the statements reviewed suggests a link between that decision and the fire.

Tusk framed the case as part of a wider contest. Writing on X in Polish, he said German police had detained the two at the request of Polish services, called the fire “another act of hybrid warfare” in a translation of his words, and said the perpetrators would answer before the Polish justice system. The arrests were announced a day after Poland’s intelligence spokesman said authorities were investigating an alleged plot against Tusk and Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, the Kyiv Independent reported. Kosiniak-Kamysz told a press briefing: “We are taking this matter very seriously.”

Poland’s case file will eventually have to show the second link the ministers already assert, from two men in custody in Germany to a named officer in Moscow. When prosecutors opened the investigation they cited Article 130 of the criminal code, the provision on acting for a foreign intelligence service, and said nobody had been charged. They named no suspect, no handler and no payment, only a suspicion.