Credit: Starlink
German police have detained two Turkish nationals suspected of setting fire to the Starlink ground station in Poland’s Masovia region last month, and Poland intends to put them on trial at home. The arrests were carried out at the request of Polish security services, nearly three weeks after the blaze at the site in Wola Krobowska.
That’s according to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who posted on X on Monday that German police had picked up the two men on behalf of Polish services. “This is another act of hybrid warfare,” Tusk wrote in Polish, adding that “the perpetrators of the sabotage will answer to the Polish justice system.”
Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński filled in a few more details in his own post, saying the arrests in Germany came out of work by the Polish police and the ABW, the country’s internal security agency, in cooperation with Germany’s federal criminal police, the BKA. He said the two Turkish citizens are responsible for setting fire to the Starlink station in Wola Krobowska and that the charge is sabotage and diversion on behalf of a foreign intelligence service, though he didn’t say which country that service belongs to.
The fire broke out on the evening of September 23 at the antenna installation run by state-owned telecom Exatel, about 50 kilometers south of Warsaw. The next day, Poland’s digital minister Krzysztof Gawkowski called the fire an act of sabotage aimed at a station he described as vital to keeping internet service running in Ukraine. Firefighters found a burned power supply cabinet and no one was hurt, and Exatel said its services weren’t affected.
The site is one of the gateways that connect Starlink satellites to terrestrial networks for users in Central Europe and Ukraine, which is why officials treated the attack as more than simple vandalism. Starlink has also been making the case for openness about threats to its network in orbit, recently calling undisclosed satellite maneuvers the biggest risk it faces in low Earth orbit, but this case is a reminder that the ground side of the network has to be protected too.
Do you think European countries are doing enough to protect infrastructure like Starlink’s ground stations?
Want to see more of our stories on Google?
P.S. — Buying a new Tesla? Click here to save $1,000 USD, while supporting independent news.
Help support us by shopping on Amazon here.
Links in this post are affiliate links, so we earn a tiny commission at no charge to you. Thanks for supporting independent media!
