Polish officials have called a fire at a Starlink ground station south of Warsaw a deliberate act, the newest entry in what they describe as a hybrid-warfare campaign against their country.
The blaze started late on Wednesday at a facility in Wola Krobowska, roughly 50 kilometers from the capital. Investigators found a bottle of flammable liquid resembling a Molotov cocktail nearby, and the distribution panel that feeds the site’s antennas was destroyed.
The station that carries Ukraine’s traffic
Exatel, Poland’s state telecommunications operator, runs the station, one of the points where Starlink satellites hand traffic off to terrestrial networks. Its counterpart sits in Kaunas, Lithuania; the pair carry service for Central Europe, and for Ukraine, whose battlefield communications lean heavily on Starlink.
Digital affairs minister Krzysztof Gawkowski told broadcaster TVP that the site matters to the security and continuity of internet service in Ukraine, and that the method used points to Russian involvement. Deputy defense minister Cezary Tomczyk argued that any suspicious fire should be presumed possible sabotage until proven otherwise.
An investigation with no conclusion yet
Poland’s Internal Security Agency, known domestically as the ABW, has opened the case alongside the country’s police. A security services spokesman said naming a cause now would be premature, and officials reported limited damage with nobody hurt.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk said last week that allied intelligence points to a Russian plan for a heavier wave of hybrid attacks against the states that back Kyiv, and that Moscow intends to make them look like accidents. The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism counts 151 sabotage incidents across Europe since 2022, 31 of them in Poland.
