Poland tries to live with the uncomfortable certainty that lThe war is no longer just on the other side of the borderbut has been installed in its territory in the form of selective explosions, drones that cross the sky, suspicious fires, cyberattacks, hate campaigns on networks and a trickle of covert operations that do not seek to destroy infrastructure, but rather something deeper, to create the feeling that no space is safe.
Warsaw bluntly calls it psychological warfare and the latest episodes have raised the alarm to levels not seen since 2022. The trigger was again a railway track. A few days ago, an explosion damaged a section of the line linking Warsaw with Lublin, part key for military transports to Ukraine. The detonation produced no victims thanks to the fact that the driver detected the deformation of the tracks in time, but the message was evident. The Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorskiwas emphatic and assured that it was not just another sabotage, but rather “state terrorism” in an operation whose objective was cause deaths.
In less than 72 hours, Polish authorities identified the suspects, two Ukrainian citizens with accredited links with Russian services. According to Warsaw, both had traveled to Poland from Belarus and fled the country through the same point after placing the explosives. The prosecution speaks of espionage, danger to railway traffic and use of explosive material while the Government has formally requested his extradition to Minsk, although no one in Warsaw is confident of receiving a response.
War of psychological attrition
The political reaction was immediate. Poland closed the last operational Russian consulate in the country, that of Gdansk, and activated the Operation Horizonan unprecedented deployment in peacetime: 10,000 soldiers, reservists and agents will protect essential infrastructure, logistics nodes, stations, energy warehouses and digital nodes against the possibility of new attacks. The atmosphere is reminiscent of the anti-terrorist measures adopted in Europe after the 9/11 attacks, but with a key difference: this time, the threat comes from a state with military capacity and explicit willingness to go beyond NATO’s borders.
It is not an isolated episode. The fire that devastated a large shopping center in Warsaw last year, factory fires, minor sabotage and the arrest of dozens of people suspected of collaborating with Russia have woven a disturbing pattern. The same goes for drones that in recent months have forced airports in Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Norway, Latvia and Poland to temporarily close.
No government has said it openly, but in European capitals no one believes that these are technical coincidences. Polish analysts speak of a “war of psychological attrition.” It is a concept that Warsaw uses more and more frequently and that refers to small, cheap actions, difficult to attribute in real time and whose main value is not to destroy anything, but to undermine the country’s confidence.
Polish intelligence services have detected an increase in two lines of action: “kinetic” acts, such as attacks on vehicles with Ukrainian license plates or vandalism of anti-war murals, and a massive offensive on social networks aimed at inflaming anti-Ukrainian sentiment and present refugees as an internal threat. All with the aim of introducing into the public conversation the idea that supporting kyiv costs too much, that war creeps into everyday life and that keeping the eastern front united is not worth the risk. It is a classic Kremlin strategy that no longer seeks to convince, but rather to confuse, or that does not seek to divide from the outside, but rather to cause European societies to divide themselves.
Logistics gateway to Ukraine
In this field, Poland is a priority objective. It is the logistical gateway to Ukraine, the country that has sent the most weapons proportionally and the NATO border closest to the Russian-Belarusian front. Moscow knows this and perceives that Polish cohesion is beginning to show cracks. The Government of Donald Tusk maintains a strong line of support for kyiv, but internal polarization and the advance of nationalist discourse have created a breeding ground that Russia is trying to exploit.
Each attack that appears to be committed by Ukrainians, even if they are linked to Russian espionage, triggers disinformation on networks with waves of false messages, conspiracy theories and a story that seeks to install the idea that refugees are a greater risk than the Kremlin itself. Psychological warfare works precisely this way because it does not aim to knock down a bridge, but rather to create the impression that any of them can fall. You do not need to penetrate the computer systems of an airport, you just have to a drone forces a runway to close for half an hour.
According to European intelligence, Russia has gone from relying on infiltrated diplomats to outsourcing sabotage tasks to individuals recruited by Telegram, paid in cryptocurrencies and without full awareness of who is behind it. The Kremlin, of course, denies everything. Dmitri PeskovPutin’s spokesperson, speaks of “Russophobia” and accuses Warsaw of seeing the Russian hand in any incident and hence Moscow has announced diplomatic retaliation or the reduction of the Polish presence in Russia; an answer that confirms the total deterioration of relationships between both countries.
In Warsaw, no one has any illusions. Living on the frontier of a hybrid war has become routine and recent decisions, such as the closure of the consulate or constant alerts, reveal a growing effort to shield society in the face of the confusion that Moscow is trying to sow.