Poland’s Starlink fire suspects face handover

German police arrested two Turkish citizens on 12 October on Polish warrants. They are suspected of setting fire to a Starlink ground station at Wola Krobowska in Poland's Mazovia region (Polish Interior Ministry). The arrests move Poland's case forward. The evidence made public so far does not show that Russian intelligence ordered the fire, as Polish leaders say, or that anyone lost their internet connection.

From a fire to a warrant

The fire broke out at about 21:00 on 23 September in a cabinet housing power equipment at the site (PAP). Wola Krobowska is a gateway, the point where Starlink satellites hand internet traffic to networks on the ground.

On 25 September the National Prosecutor's Office said its findings pointed to arson. It opened an investigation into sabotage, terrorism and work for a foreign intelligence service (National Prosecutor's Office).

Poland then turned to the European Arrest Warrant. Under this system, a court in one EU country can ask another to detain a suspect and hand them over, without the slow diplomacy of traditional extradition. Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced the arrests. Polish police chief Marek Boroń thanked German police and Europol liaison officers, whose job is to help national forces share information across borders (InfoSecurity24).

The men have not yet been charged. Polish officials say charges will follow once Germany surrenders them (Polish Interior Ministry). Under the warrant system, German judges make that decision, not Warsaw.

What Poland has shown, and what it has asserted

Prosecutors cite "justified suspicion" that Russian services ordered the attack to disrupt Starlink traffic across Poland and Central and Eastern Europe (National Prosecutor's Office). That phrase marks the legal bar for opening an investigation. It is not a published chain of proof.

Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński went further. He said he had no doubts about Russian involvement (Polish Interior Ministry).

The investigative work described so far concerns the two men themselves. Boroń said investigators reconstructed how the fire was prepared and how the suspects got away, and secured recordings of what they did (InfoSecurity24). Evidence like that can tie the suspects to the fire. Nothing disclosed so far ties them to whoever may have sent them, whether footage, messages or payments.

Did anyone actually lose connection?

Poland's digital ministry explained in 2022 that Wola Krobowska served Central European users. It added that satellites over Ukraine could route traffic through the site (Ministry of Digital Affairs). So the site is a plausible target for anyone hoping to disrupt Ukraine's connections.

Digital minister Krzysztof Gawkowski made that case on 24 September. He said the attack aimed to stop traffic so that institutions, including the Ukrainian army, would lose access. Then he added: "Today everything works" (TVP Info). He described what the attackers intended, not an outage anyone measured.

Some foreign coverage blurred that line. Reuters rendered his remarks as "effectively cutting off" a connection (Reuters). Czech agency copy described an actual disconnection (Seznam Zprávy).

Exatel is the Polish firm that sublets the land and supplies data links to the site. It says its own services were unaffected (Exatel). It also says it neither owns nor monitors the gateway equipment, so it cannot speak for Starlink's service. No operator logs or traffic data have been published either way.

The arrests are real progress. Polish warrants led to two suspects being detained in Germany, and a German court now holds the next decision. Beyond that, the public record is thin. The claim of a Russian order rests on ministers' statements and a prosecutor's threshold for opening a case. The claim of lost service rests on nothing published, and the minister responsible said the network kept working.