Berlin — Poland launched a large-scale security operation this week along its border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, the country’s national police chief said, and the Polish prime minister said the effort may have prevented a sabotage or provocation operation targeting the NATO member.
Additional police and counterterrorism units, as well as troops from the elite military special forces unit GROM, have been deployed as part of the operation, which national police chief Marek Boroń said would run from Monday until at least Nov. 8.
Polish and allied intelligence agencies had warned of possible sabotage operations and provocations during the first half of November, particularly along Poland’s border with Kaliningrad, and including possible border incursions by armed groups.
Those warnings had already put domestic security agencies on high alert even before the additional security forces were deployed to the northeast regions of Warmia-Masuria and Podlaskie.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Tuesday that suspicious movements were observed overnight near Kaliningrad, including individuals carrying flashlights close to the border area.
He said the quick reaction by Polish security forces may have prevented an unspecified provocation this week.
“We very quickly mobilized the necessary security forces and means on site, and we successfully prevented any attempted acts of provocation, if that was the intention. Of course, we will never be able to completely confirm that,” Tusk said Tuesday, adding that intelligence had pointed for weeks to possible “acts of diversion or more serious provocation” against the European Union, including “the intrusion of armed individuals into Polish territory.”
A special command center was set up at Polish national police headquarters to coordinate the new security operation.
The goal is to protect the public, detect suspicious activities early, and prevent attacks on critical infrastructure, the police said Tuesday.
Russia’s exclave of Kaliningrad, bordered only by NATO members Poland and Lithuania and the Baltic Sea to the west, is of considerable military and strategic significance. It is widely believed that Russian security agencies, including the FSB and GRU intelligence agencies, have a presence in the territory in eastern Europe.
To the immediate east of Kaliningrad is the strategically important Suwałki Corridor — the only land border connecting the Baltic NATO states with the rest of the alliance, where Poland and Lithuania share a short border sandwiched between Russian and Belarusian territory.
Polish authorities had not published any evidence of specific plans for an act of sabotage or an attack originating from Kaliningrad by Tuesday afternoon, but the alert comes after months of sabotage, air incursion and other low-level incidents across Europe blamed largely on Russia.
During a joint news conference with Lithuania’s prime minister on Oct. 13, Tusk referred to a conversation he had recently had with NATO Supreme Allied Commander Alexus Grynkewich, and said it had reinforced his own concerns about increasing threats of sabotage, including possible provocations involving aircraft or attacks on border crossings.
At about the same time, the head of Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5, Sir Ken McCallum, painted a dark picture of the security threats facing the U.K. and Europe, and he said that among state threats, “Russia remains aggressor number one.”
“The Russian military and intelligence services are once again escalating their attempts at hybrid warfare,” McCallum warned, adding that Moscow was “being careful to stay below the NATO Article 5 threshold” with its actions, which would trigger the alliance’s collective defense principle.
“It’d be foolish for them to cross” that line, he said, and so far Russia was sticking to “tactics that stop short — though sometimes not much short — of conventional conflict.”
Among the numerous incidents attributed to Russia across Europe this year alone, there was a fire in August at a Polish factory that produces drones and other military components, and an arson attack on a Starlink satellite ground station that Polish officials blamed directly on Russia in September.
Russian drones have also crossed into NATO airspace in Eastern Europe repeatedly during the war in Ukraine, and just this week the U.K. Royal Navy said it had intercepted a Russian spy ship off the far northern coast of Scotland.
The navy said helicopters were dispatched to track the intelligence-gathering ship, which was “closely monitoring” a NATO exercise taking place near Scotland’s Outer Hebrides islands.
