Poland calls Starlink ground-station fire 'sabotage', says it targeted Ukraine internet link
Poland's digital affairs minister says a fire at a Starlink ground station south of Warsaw was deliberate sabotage aimed at cutting internet access for institutions including the Ukrainian military; investigators found a bottle of flammable liquid at the scene.
Poland’s digital affairs minister has said a fire at a Starlink satellite communications station in central Poland was an act of “sabotage” deliberately designed to disable the facility and disrupt internet access for institutions including the Ukrainian military, according to AFP.
“This act of sabotage was deliberately designed to disable the station … disrupting internet access for various institutions, including the Ukrainian army,” Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski told public broadcaster TVP Info on Thursday, adding there was “much to suggest that we are dealing with an element of the next phase of hybrid warfare.”
The blaze broke out at about 9pm local time on Wednesday at the station in Wola Krobowska, about 40 kilometres south of Warsaw. Firefighters from the Grójec district were alerted at 21:07 and sent three units to the site, where they found the housing of a power distribution box alight over an area of about three square metres. Operations ended at about 3:19am; no injuries were reported, and the power distribution unit connected to the antennas and a backup generator were damaged.
Investigators found a bottle containing a flammable substance near the damaged equipment, Polish media reported, though an electrical short circuit has not been ruled out as a cause and lightning was excluded. Police and the Internal Security Agency (ABW) are investigating.
Gawkowski said many indications suggested the incident fitted into “this new Russian doctrine of attack”, but responsibility has not been formally confirmed. Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he would wait for “100% certainty” before calling it sabotage, while admitting the incident “does not look good.”
The station is owned by state-owned telecom company Exatel and is used to route internet traffic through Poland, including to Ukraine, via SpaceX’s Starlink system. The minister said the station was still operational and work was under way to keep it running normally.
The incident came the same day Denmark’s defence intelligence service warned that Russia was likely to step up hybrid attacks against NATO countries in the coming months.
More on this topic: all Satellite Internet stories