Poland’s prime minister has said an explosion on a railway line leading to the Ukraine border this weekend was caused by “an unprecedented act of sabotage”, and vowed to catch those responsible “regardless of who their backers are”.

Visiting the scene this morning, Donald Tusk said the damage done to the railway tracks on Sunday was deliberate and likely aimed at blowing up the train. He expressed relief there were no casualties.

Speaking later in Warsaw, after an emergency meeting of security officials, Poland’s special services minister said there was a “very high chance” that the blast was carried out on the orders of “foreign services”.

  • verdi@feddit.org
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    10 hours ago

    9/10 chances this was done by Polish farmers still pissed about UA grain. The public opinion in Poland has done a 180.

    • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Yup. I’m just wondering what if anything will come from this. I certainly don’t see this turning into an Article 5 situation but Europe will also need to look to be making a strong response lest they signal that this kind of sabotage is acceptable.

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      It’s the filthy fucking Russians, always is. At what point does Europe call bullshit and invade?! Easy for me to say across the Pond, but if Mexico was constantly sabotaging America, we’d quickly kick their ass.

  • Demdaru@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Funfact. Rail Guard in Poland is one of the few organisations that are armed.

    Didn’t help here but I’ll be waiting for news about shootout on the rail some time in the future. Would be funny.

      • harc@szmer.info
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        1 day ago

        Many Polish people will belive anything you tell them. We nearly elected a guy out of nowhere, claiming to have the answer to all our problems in a black briefcase, that he would open only after the election (Stan Tymiński). Thats some Pulp Fiction level fuckery.

        • Albbi@piefed.ca
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          19 hours ago

          You can find people everywhere that will believe anything you tell them. But that’s also an awesome story. I love hearing about these sort of gimmicks people trying to get elected use, sorta like Lord Buckethead. But yeah pretty sad that the “briefcase of all you solutions which I cannot show you right now” worked.

  • tornavish@lemmy.cafe
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    1 day ago

    I’m actually surprised train derailments don’t happen more often. It seems relatively easy to remove a section of rail—without explosives.

    • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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      20 hours ago

      Modern rail is welded at each seam, it also gets work hardened, so unless you find a recently installed section, cutting it is going to be quite difficult.

      Plus they monitor continuity on the rail and the trains would be alerted if there is a break.

      Other obstacles on the rail would probably work, but in not sure what kinds of countermeasures the trains might have for those either.

    • frongt@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      Come to the US, it happens all the time here. Mostly due to lack of maintenance. The companies that own the rails don’t pay for it since it’s not profitable, and the government lets them.

    • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Rail integrity is monitored in several ways to aid in prevention of non-intentional derailments so it’s a little more than trivial to do, but yeah they are still extremely vulnerable. The biggest reason not to do it is that, at least historically, the response to even minor fuckery of rail infrastructure has been vehemently disproportionate.