INVESTIGATION: Warsaw suspects Moscow in the Wola Krobowska Starlink fire, with no one charged so far

No one charged so far

A statement without a name

On September 25, Poland’s National Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation into sabotage on behalf of a foreign intelligence service, after a fire at a Starlink station in Wola Krobowska.

The statement names a village, a date, two articles of the Penal Code, two investigative services.

Everything is there. Except a name.

A village in Masovia, a September night, a fire.

It names no one. So far, no one has been charged, concludes the text signed by spokesman Przemysław Nowak.

A night in Masovia

On Wednesday, September 23, around 9 p.m., firefighters in Grójec got the call, according to TVN24. Three units went out.

A fire at night in the countryside, we know what that is. The smell of burning plastic that carries a long way. The sirens you hear before you see the lights. The heat on your face, then water hissing on metal.

No casualties, according to the channel. The fire hit the station’s power unit.

Who set this fire?

The prosecutors say someone did. They do not say who.

The ghost in this file has a name. It is written nowhere.

This whole investigation lives in that gap.

A fire established, a name missing.

Arson, established

What the prosecutors hold

Exhibit one. Based on the findings so far, the prosecutors write, the fire was set deliberately.

Prosecutors from the office were on site from September 24. They examined the scene and heard witnesses, alongside officers from the ABW, the Internal Security Agency, and the CBŚP, the police Central Investigation Bureau.

Witnesses heard. The scene examined. One cause retained: a fire set on purpose.

The investigation is assigned to the two services’ field offices in Radom.

On the 24th, according to the Kyiv Post, local police were handling the case and both services had been notified. The next day, the National Prosecutor’s Office took over.

One day. Two floors of the state.

Twenty-four hours to classify

On the morning of the 24th, prosecutor Aneta Góźdź said she did not rule out sabotage, TVN24 reports.

On the 25th, the National Prosecutor’s Office opened the investigation. Sabotage was no longer a hypothesis. It was in the legal classification.

Twenty-four hours between a hypothesis and a classification.

That is fast. It is not a verdict.

The fire is established. The arsonist is still missing.

A station 40 kilometers from Warsaw

A gateway to Ukraine

Exhibit two, the target.

Wola Krobowska lies about 40 kilometers south of Warsaw, according to the Kyiv Post, in Grójec County.

The station is a Starlink ground gateway. It links the satellites to the internet and serves Central Europe, Ukraine included, according to TVN24.

Gawkowski specified, according to the BBC, that it routes internet traffic through Poland to several countries, including Ukraine, using SpaceX systems.

The satellites relay data among themselves, the Kyiv Post notes. But the traffic eventually has to pass through stations on the ground.

A station of this kind, Gawkowski said on the 24th, decides whether a region of Poland, Europe or Ukraine has internet or not, according to the Kyiv Post. On TVN24, he even raised the prospect of ATMs going down if such stations shut.

A gateway. A tap.

Unclear ownership

Ownership, for its part, remains unclear. The BBC speaks of a Polish public station. The state operator Exatel says it does not own the infrastructure: it leases the land, according to TVN24.

The site sits a few hundred meters from a military reconnaissance and electronic support center, RMF24 reports.

An internet gateway. A military center next door. A village.

A discreet station, and a whole flow of traffic running through it.

The prosecutors’ suspicion

On orders from Russian services

Exhibit three, the heaviest.

The prosecutors write that there is a well-founded suspicion: the perpetrators allegedly acted on orders from Russian special services, on behalf of a foreign intelligence service, against Poland.

The prosecutors also set out the presumed aim: to disrupt Starlink internet traffic and links in Poland and in other countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

Two criminal code articles

The investigation invokes Articles 130 § 7 and 163 § 1 of the Polish Penal Code: acting on behalf of a foreign intelligence service, and a fire causing large-scale damage. The prosecutors speak of an act of sabotage and of an offense they class among attacks.

I stand with the Polish prosecutors, who suspect without convicting, and with the people in Ukraine who depend on these links. Against the sabotage campaign Warsaw attributes, on suspicion, to Russian services. Because on September 25, a prosecutor’s office wrote that a Starlink station had been set on fire to cut off Central Europe.

Arson established, an order suspected, no name.

Well-founded suspicion. Two words. They do not make a culprit.

The text does not say which Russian services. It does not say which order. It says a suspicion exists, and that it is well founded.

A suspicion written into a statement binds the person who signs it. Nowak signed it.

Suspecting is not judging, and the prosecutors know it.

Kyiv, a data center claimed

What Moscow signs

Exhibit four. It does not come from Poland. It comes from Moscow.

On the morning of Saturday, September 26, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed a strike on a data center in Kyiv. According to Moscow, that center provided mobile internet and Starlink support for the Ukrainian armed forces, the Kyiv Post reports.

In Kyiv, Moscow signs. In Wola Krobowska, nobody signs.

Moscow announced the strike of the 26th. Nobody announced the fire of the 23rd.

Same target, two methods

And yet the targets look alike. The nodes that make Starlink work for Ukraine. Claimed on one side. Suspected on the other. That connection is mine.

It proves nothing about Wola Krobowska. It shows what Moscow considers a legitimate target.

A claimed strike is not a confession to another. It is a motive made public.

Take Poland out of the picture. What remains is a campaign, claimed openly, against the Ukrainian army’s links.

Same target. Two standards of proof.

In Kyiv the strike is signed. In Masovia it awaits a name.

Starlink, lost by the Russian army

The February verification

Exhibit five, the motive.

Since February, a verification system developed by Kyiv with SpaceX has disabled terminals used by Russian troops, the Kyiv Post recalls.

Moscow looked for workarounds. Moscow tried to get terminals registered by paid Ukrainians. Moscow tried to strike the system’s nodes. Its own Rassvet satellites, meanwhile, suffered from failed launches, according to the same paper.

Accounts registered for Moscow

In September, Ukraine’s SBU arrested two men in Lviv suspected of trying to register more than 50 Starlink accounts for Russian intelligence, according to the Kyiv Post.

No link to Wola Krobowska is alleged in what the paper reports. I am not inventing one.

An army that has lost access tries to get it back. Or to take it away from the other side.

Since February, Moscow has been looking for another route to the sky. Or a way to close everyone else’s.

A motive is not proof. It is a line of inquiry.

A motive. A precedent. A target.

Losing Starlink gives you a reason to cut it.

The same Wednesday, a Mi-8

Forty-two seconds

Exhibit six, the calendar.

On Wednesday, September 23, Warsaw also reported that a Russian military helicopter had briefly entered its airspace without authorization, the BBC reports. It stayed 42 seconds. Poland scrambled fighter jets.

A helicopter during the day. A station on fire that night.

Leipzig, Paris, Copenhagen

Earlier this month, Berlin blamed Russia for the attempted drone attack on Leipzig/Halle airport, and Paris ordered a plan to protect critical infrastructure, the BBC recalls.

The day after the fire, Danish military intelligence wrote that Moscow now seeks to stop aid from reaching Ukraine directly, including through sabotage against defense companies or rail convoys.

The BBC notes that Moscow still denies any involvement, despite mounting evidence.

Hybrid warfare, the BBC also recalls, means non-military means of pressure and destabilization. Cyberattacks. Sabotage. Disinformation.

Two alerts the same Wednesday, only one with a registration number.

Nothing has been tried

The case for caution

The argument against this investigation is serious. Moscow would sign it. So would part of Warsaw.

There is no suspect. There is no published proof of the Russian link. There is no station knocked out for good.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk himself said it did not look good, while refusing to draw conclusions without complete certainty, according to Ukrainska Pravda.

Accusing Moscow before a trial would be playing politics with a fire.

What the word suspicion allows

The prosecutors do not accuse Moscow. They suspect perpetrators, acting on a presumed order. The word is a legal one. It allows investigating, not convicting.

To suspect is to search. To accuse is to have found.

And the suspicion does not float alone. The arson is established. The target was a gateway to Ukraine. Moscow claims the same kind of target elsewhere.

Tusk’s caution does not weaken the case. It protects it.

A suspicion without a name remains fragile. A suspicion with a motive, a target and a method is less so.

Careful is not timid. That is how you get to a name.

Ministers outrun their prosecutors

Żurek already calls it Russian-inspired

Now for what costs my own camp.

Justice Minister and Prosecutor General Waldemar Żurek declared that this fire was no ordinary blaze but sabotage inspired by Russian services, Rzeczpospolita reports. He promised the perpetrators would be identified, arrested and prosecuted, according to RMF24.

He asserts what his own prosecutors only suspect.

A minister who promises arrests before the first charge takes a risk. If the name does not come, the promise will remain.

The zeal is understandable. It proves nothing.

One outage, three accounts

Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski spoke of a fire meant to knock the station out, cutting internet to several institutions, including the Ukrainian army, according to the BBC.

Did the outage really happen? The Kyiv Post writes that the station lost its connection and that several organizations, including the Ukrainian army, were affected before service resumed. Exatel says no service on its network was disrupted, according to RMF24. The BBC describes a station that is operational.

Three accounts for one night.

Three official voices, three speeds.

That is true. And yet it does not change what the prosecutors have established: the fire was deliberate.

Outrunning the prosecutors means putting words in their mouth.

The link to the trenches

An antenna at the end of the line

I come back to the statement. No one, so far.

While the name is missing, the link is in use every night.

At the end of a Starlink link, on the front, there is a flat antenna set on a makeshift roof. An operator guiding a drone. A team waiting for an evacuation.

The Kyiv Post calls this access a key asset of the Ukrainian army. The Russian army lost it in February.

A gateway on the ground, far from the front. An antenna on the front. In between, satellites that are useless without the ground.

An hour without a network

An hour without a network is an image that does not arrive. An hour without a network is an order that does not get through. An hour without a network is an evacuation still waiting.

The same night, according to the BBC, a Russian strike took the lives of six farmworkers sorting vegetables in Stara Hnylytsia, in the Kharkiv region. Four were women.

Six.

That evening, in Masovia, the fire started around 9 p.m. At the end of the link, nobody knows that a village called Wola Krobowska carries part of the night.

Nothing.

At the far end of the gateway, there is a front.

What Moscow does not say

The Kremlin has not commented

The Kremlin has not commented on the fire, the BBC notes. Russia has not claimed it, the Kyiv Post adds.

Putin keeps saying Moscow has no plans to attack NATO countries, the BBC recalls.

A very short war

Earlier this month, Lavrov said that if Europe attacked Russia, it would be a very short war, according to the BBC.

No attack planned, says the president. A very short war, says his minister. Not a word about a station on fire.

Between those two sentences, a station burned.

Silence is not a confession. It is a choice.

The Kremlin talks a lot. Not about Wola Krobowska.

Who in Moscow will ever answer the investigators in Radom?

Moscow is silent on the station and talks of a short war.

Radom, where the case will be decided

Two field offices, one mandate

The case is now in Radom, between the Internal Security Agency and the police Central Investigation Bureau.

Their work is the only answer that will hold up before a judge. A name. An order. Proof of the link.

The prosecutors already have a classification, a presumed aim, a precise target. They are missing the essential piece.

The investigators have the place. They have the time, around 9 p.m. They have witnesses who have been heard.

They still have three things to find. A perpetrator. Whoever gave the order. A link between the two.

These are police questions. They take time, not adjectives.

From suspicion to charge

A charge would turn the suspicion into an accusation. A conviction, into an adjudicated fact. We are at neither stage.

And yet the path is laid out in writing. It can be followed, and checked.

The BBC recalls that such attacks often go through intermediaries, and that Moscow always denies. The name that comes may not be Russian. The order would be, if the suspicion holds.

Radom holds the thread. The name is at the end.

What remains to be established

Who, how, on whose orders

Here is what the file does not say yet.

It does not say who set the fire. It does not say how. It does not say who gave the order, or through what channel. It does not say whether the outage hit the Ukrainian army, or for how long. It does not say who owns the burned infrastructure.

It is an honest list. It is long.

It speaks of large-scale damage, with no figure. Every line of that list is a question. None has a public answer.

Repeated warnings

The Kyiv Post recalls that Polish officials have been warning of an intensification of Russian hybrid attacks against Poland and NATO.

Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski even said Moscow was preparing something big in 2026, according to the same paper.

If the missing name confirms the suspicion, then the list of targets…

As long as the name is missing, suspicion stays suspicion.

A name before anything else

The wrong reflex

I admit it: I would like a name to come out quickly. I know that is the wrong reflex. A name found too fast is often the wrong one.

Poland is doing things in order. A fire, a finding, a classification, a suspicion.

The name will come, or it will not.

I would rather wait for the name. I do not like waiting.

A judge or a response

Will it take a name before a judge for Warsaw and its allies to respond?

Both come at a price. A response without a name is paid for in trust.

A trial takes time. A response does not. That is why the order of things matters.

A name before a judge will last longer than ten statements.

Wola Krobowska has its fire, Moscow its suspicion, the file awaits a name.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Polish National Prosecutor’s Office — investigation opened into the Starlink station fire, September 25, 2026
• TVN24 — Gawkowski and the Grójec firefighters on the fire, September 24, 2026
• Danish Defence Intelligence Service — sabotage against aid to Ukraine, September 24, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• BBC News — Poland cites sabotage at the Starlink station, September 24, 2026
• Kyiv Post — well-founded suspicion of a Russian role, September 26, 2026
• Ukrainska Pravda — sabotage investigation and Tusk’s caution, September 25, 2026