StopFake previously exposed as false the narrative that France had supplied Ukraine with defective Caesar howitzers, showing that the reports of widespread equipment failures were misleadingly amplified by pro-Kremlin outlets to discredit Western military aid.
Russian outlets seized on the railway blast along the Warsaw–Lublin route to claim that Poland had pinned the attack on Ukraine — a narrative calibrated to undermine Kyiv and drive a wedge into Polish-Ukrainian relations.
In fact, Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski publicly labeled the blast “an act of state terrorism” orchestrated by Moscow. Polish officials stressed that the suspected Ukrainian nationals were acting as recruits of Russian intelligence and later escaped to Belarus — a trajectory that, in Warsaw’s view, points squarely to Kremlin involvement.
The blast — an explosive device planted on the Warsaw–Lublin rail line near the village of Mikaszówka — struck a corridor that has become strategically vital for transporting military hardware, humanitarian supplies and fuel bound for Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelensky called for establishing a joint Polish–Ukrainian task force to counter Russian sabotage, arguing that “all facts point to a Russian trace” and that no actor other than Moscow stands to benefit from such operations.
In the wake of the attack, Poland moved to shutter the last remaining Russian consulate in Gdańsk and deployed roughly 10,000 troops to reinforce security around critical infrastructure.
It’s a familiar playbook: Moscow often deploys Ukrainian or other foreign nationals in covert operations across Europe to muddy attribution and cast doubt on Kyiv. In 2024, several Ukrainians were detained in Poland over the arson of Warsaw’s largest shopping mall — an attack that Polish prosecutors say was ordered by Russian handlers. Earlier, prosecutors charged three Polish citizens and three Belarusian nationals with carrying out sabotage on behalf of a foreign intelligence service, underscoring a pattern of Kremlin-directed hybrid warfare designed to obscure responsibility and sow political friction.
StopFake has also knocked down earlier allegations that Zelensky had somehow “admitted to plotting Tomahawk strikes,” as well as claims that Ukrainian nationals were detained in Israel for planning a terrorist attack in Jerusalem — both classic examples of Kremlin-driven disinformation engineered to portray Ukraine as a global security threat.
