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Polish prosecutors have opened a terrorism investigation into a fire at a drone factory that supplies both the Polish and Ukrainian militaries.
Getting into it: The fire occurred shortly after midnight Monday at the WB Electronics plant in Skarżysko-Kamienna, about 80 miles south of Warsaw. An employee and the fire service put it out within roughly two hours. Nobody was hurt, and damage was limited to one small building.
Prosecutors said they are investigating a “terrorist crime” involving the “deliberate setting of a fire.” They suspect someone attacked the site by “placing a device containing flammable materials” on company premises. They are also looking at possible “participation in the activities of a foreign intelligence service directed against the Republic of Poland.” Onet has reported, without confirmation, that security cameras caught a masked man at the plant when the fire started. No one is in custody.
WB Electronics is Poland’s largest private defense company and a key supplier to its military. It builds reconnaissance drones, loitering munitions, digital command and control systems, automated fire control, and communications equipment, including drones Ukraine uses against Russian forces. The company is playing the fire down, calling it “minor” and saying that “all procedures and safety systems worked.” Despite this, a government spokesperson said the incident is being taken “extremely seriously.”
This all comes as sabotage keeps turning up at the sites and shipping routes that supply Ukraine, including the explosive-laden drone found near a Ukrainian cargo plane at Leipzig/Halle Airport earlier this month. The German government has formally blamed Russia for that failed attack.
Warsaw has said before that Russian and Belarusian services have put agents inside Poland to carry out sabotage. Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in August that authorities had detained a Russian citizen “who had been recruited by Russian services to carry out assassination in Warsaw.”
