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The Algorithm of Escalation: How Ukraine Turned Poland into an Operational Theatre

By Adrian Korczyński – New Eastern Outlook – December 14, 2025

November 15, 2025, 21:00. An explosive charge detonated on the railway tracks between Miki and Gołąb. The blast was so powerful that windowpanes shook for kilometres, and residents felt the tremor in their walls. The flash left a metre-long gash in the rail, shattered sleepers, and destroyed the overhead power lines. The very next day, the two Ukrainian citizens responsible for the detonation legally crossed the border at Terespol and departed for Belarus.

Border Guard cameras recorded their departure – nothing raised suspicion at the time. They escaped before investigators could link the fingerprints and phone left at the scene.

Within hours of the explosion, Polish media and politicians almost unanimously pointed to “Russian sabotage.” Meanwhile, those familiar with Ukrainian sabotage operations immediately noticed something else: a plastic charge attached at three points to the rail, nighttime detonation on a key supply line, no civilian casualties – the exact modus operandi Ukraine’s SBU security service had used repeatedly in Crimea.

The difference was only one: this time, the target lay on Polish territory.

Thus, contrary to the public narrative, the blast near Lublin became a piece of a larger puzzle – a quiet campaign Ukraine had been conducting on Polish soil for years, with one overriding objective: to drag Poland, and thereby NATO, into an open confrontation with Russia. This mechanism had a beginning and a defined logic. Its algorithm was activated much earlier.

The Beginning of the Algorithm

In the summer of 2022, Mykhailo Podolyak – a former opposition journalist expelled from Belarus, now one of Zelenskyy’s closest advisors – introduced a simple formula: “Either Europe hands over weapons to Ukraine, or it prepares for a direct clash with Russia”. It was not a request. It was the seed of a mechanism that later grew into Kyiv’s entire communications strategy: framing every Western decision as a choice between supporting Ukraine or facing its own catastrophe.

November 15, 2022, Przewodów. A missile struck, killing two Poles. Before any official investigation could clarify the matter, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy publicly declared it a “Russian missile” and an attack on NATO.

His words instantly shaped a media narrative about the potential triggering of Article 5.

Chaos reigned for crucial hours. Only later did the USA and NATO confirm it was a Ukrainian S-300 air defence missile.

This, however, was revealed only after the version of a Russian attack had circled the globe and fulfilled its political purpose.

The incident did not change the course of the war, but it changed the rules of the game: from then on, any similar event could serve as a pretext for immediately blaming Russia and forcing a Western response.

There were no apologies. Silence fell – though, as time later showed, it was only temporary.

The game had moved to new tracks – both figuratively and literally.

Operations in the Shadows – Poland as a Proving Ground

The years 2024–2025 brought a series of incidents too coherent to be coincidental. Warehouses, logistics centres, and storage halls burned – facilities with a profile strikingly similar to the infrastructure Ukrainian services had previously attacked in Russian-controlled areas. The same kind of locations, the same target logic, the same failed attempts at explanation – the pattern repeated itself like clockwork.

Warsaw, May 2024. Marywilska 44, the largest commercial and warehouse centre in Masovia, a key hub of regional logistics, goes up in flames. Weeks later, the prosecutor’s office announces: the perpetrators are Ukrainian citizens, allegedly acting on orders from Russian intelligence. Half a year on, the picture is telling: in Poland, “small fry” are convicted for belonging to a criminal group, but the verdicts contain not a word about a Russian directive. The sentences are low, simplified, with no appeal, covering mainly arson and obstruction of the investigation. The group’s leaders remain at large outside Poland – Interpol red notices, European Arrest Warrants – no extradition. The investigation stalls, with materials classified.

July 2024, Warsaw. Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) intercepts a courier parcel containing a ready-to-use explosive device – nitroglycerin, detonators, and a shaped charge. The sender is a Ukrainian citizen, Kristina S.

The blueprint was identical. Immediate reports appeared about an alleged Russian sponsor, based on “supposed contacts” of some detainees with citizens of the Russian Federation. The indictment reached court in 2025, yet the case – like the one concerning Marywilska – ground to a halt.

It is worth noting the recurring motif. The nature of the targets, timing, and type of devices used strongly resemble operations Ukrainian services conducted in Russian-controlled territories – in Melitopol or Tokmak. There, too, logistic infrastructure burned; there, too, improvised devices and the element of surprise were used, often at night. Juxtaposing the facts, the pattern of actions in Poland appears remarkably similar.

And yet, all such events in Poland are described with one sentence:

“Russian sabotage carried out by Ukrainians.”

Network and Backdrop: Unique Operational Capability

Poland hosts a network to which no other actor has comparable access: hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens with legal rights of residence, work, and free movement. These are not just migrants – they constitute a ready-made, perfectly embedded operational environment. Its representatives appeared in the case files of every major sabotage incident.

In February 2025, activist Natalia Panczenko, commenting on Polish proposals to cut social benefits for Ukrainians, uttered a sentence that, in the context of these case files, sounded different from a mere warning: “There could be fights, arson of shops, houses.”

When a few months later Karol Nawrocki won the elections, combining these social benefit proposals with a ban on OUN-UPA symbolism, Kyiv responded on two tracks. On the street, a wave of arson broke out, matching the earlier pattern of sabotage. In diplomacy, the Ukrainian embassy issued an official note threatening retaliation over the draft law.

This synchronisation – violence in the shadows and a threat in the spotlight – shattered the narrative of “Russian sabotage by Ukrainians.” It revealed something more dangerous: that behind the attacks could be an actor possessing not only the unique capability but also the political will to use them openly as a tool of pressure.

Key Testimony

September 1, 2025. Outgoing President Andrzej Duda gives an interview to Bogdan Rymanowski. When asked if Zelenskyy pressured him to immediately blame Russia after Przewodów, Duda replies simply:

“You could say that.”

And when asked if it was an attempt to drag Poland into the war, Duda states plainly:

“That’s how I perceived it. They have been trying from the very beginning to drag everyone into the war. Preferably a NATO country.”

These words were not an accusation. They were an unveiling of the hidden logic of events. In one laconic answer, Andrzej Duda – the politician who for years embodied the course of “unconditional support for Ukraine” – cast a new, grim light on all prior incidents. Suddenly, all incidents – Przewodów, the arsons, the rail explosions – fell into one coherent, terrifying context: Ukraine is playing a game with Poland where the goal is escalation, not security.

Finale of the Operation – Explosion on the Tracks

In November 2025, the ABW detains another group of saboteurs – Ukrainian and Belarusian citizens – in possession of weapons, explosives, and maps indicating planned actions against critical infrastructure.

This was no ordinary “criminal group.” It was an operational cell.

A few days earlier, an explosion ripped through railway tracks near Lublin.

The operation mirrored the earlier incidents with precision: the perpetrators were the same, the method characteristic of Ukrainian special services, and the target – critical infrastructure. The media narrative immediately pointed to Russia as the culprit, while the real objective was more subtle and political: to force Warsaw’s hand. As if someone was replaying the same blueprint step by step.

“But What If It Is Russia?” – Dismantling a Convenient Lie

For the sake of completeness, one must examine the narrative repeated like a mantra after every sabotage act: But what if it is Russia?

At first glance, it makes sense. For years, Poland built its image as Ukraine’s most ardent ally and the loudest critic of the Kremlin. Donald Tusk spoke of “our war”. Szymon Hołownia promised, “we will grind Putin into the ground.”

Karol Nawrocki called the Russian president a “war criminal”, and Russia a “post-imperialist and neo-communist country” – and these are just statements from the highest level.

This was not ordinary rhetoric – it was doctrine. A state that programmes its public opinion in this manner should expect the risk of a reaction. The scenario of a Russian “warning shot” – a precise strike meant to remind Warsaw of the limits of patience – would be strategically rational.

This scenario, however, collapses the moment it is laid over the sequence of facts from 2022–2025. It is demolished by the very pattern of all events.

Who, after the Przewodów blast, immediately, without evidence, pressured for blaming Russia?

Who regularly communicated to Poland that “war will come to your home if you stop supporting us”?

Who possessed a unique, massive logistical and operational network within Poland?

Who had a direct interest in escalating tension and forcing specific decisions on Warsaw?

And finally: who – as President Duda admitted – had been trying from the start to “drag a NATO country into the war”?

The answer to each of these questions is the same. And it does not lead to Moscow.

The Russian lead is a convenient lie. Convenient for Warsaw, which does not want to admit it became a target of its ally. Convenient for the media, which prefers a simple story. And most convenient for Ukraine, whose leaders knew perfectly well that every plume of smoke in Poland would be automatically attributed to Russia.

Epilogue

The issue has long ceased to be about who physically plants the charges.

The issue is about who builds their position on the roar of those explosions.

In this calculus, Russia plays only one role: the omnipresent villain of the narrative, upon whom blame can always be laid. Poland is merely the operational terrain.

The main beneficiary turns out to be the party for whom destabilisation in Poland is a strategic tool: Ukraine – a state on the brink of military catastrophe, which for years has consistently transferred the burden and risk of its war onto the territories of its allies.

Therefore, today, in the echo of the blast near Lublin, it is finally time to ask the question the Polish political class avoided for three years, and to answer it openly:

Whose strategic interest was being pursued on Poland’s turf?

The answer leads directly to Kyiv.

Adrian Korczyński, Independent Analyst & Observer on Central Europe and global policy research

December 14, 2025 Posted by aletho | False Flag Terrorism, Russophobia | NATO, Poland, Ukraine | Leave a comment