Podcast: Code Name: Train Robbery

At around 7.40 am on 17 November 2025, a Sunday, a train driver with the Polish railways, who was driving a passenger train on the Warsaw–Lublin local line, noticed that the track bedding ahead of him had been ripped up. The driver manages to brake at the last moment, just before the train derails.

The 473 passengers were thrown about inside the carriages, and some of them sustained injuries and bruises. Ambulances, railway staff, police officers and, very soon afterwards, agents from two Polish intelligence agencies – who had already been on high alert for several hours – arrived at the scene. Indeed, on the torn-up tracks of the Warsaw–Lublin line, three heavy metal brackets used to sabotage them were found, along with some severed telecommunications cables. But that is not all.

30 kilometres from the point where the train had been forced to brake, an explosion had occurred on a nearby railway line. Investigators found further tracks torn up and traces of a device made with C4 plastic explosive. Within a few hours, the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk arrived at the scene and, speaking to the cameras, openly declared that this was an unprecedented act of sabotage.

In this new episode of “Code Name”, Claudio Antonelli and Antonio Talia interview industry experts to investigate how – and whether – it is possible to protect people and goods from the ongoing acts of sabotage on railways across Europe and the world, ranging from bombings on Ukrainian railways to attacks by Houthi rebels and cyber threats. The guests are Pierguido Iezzi, a former career officer in the Italian Army, a consultant in cyber risk, strategic leadership and innovation, and cyber director at Zenita Group, and Mattia Tartaglia, chief executive and founder of Ulisses, a start-up specialising in solutions for vehicle and asset tracking and smart mobility.

The attack on the Warsaw–Lublin line is merely the most obvious example of a much wider campaign. After all, the railway remains one of the most important pieces of infrastructure for the European economy and beyond. In 2024, according to Eurostat data, 8.3 billion tickets and season tickets were issued in the European Union for domestic journeys and 150 million for international connections.Every year in Europe, the average person travels 958 kilometres on domestic routes and 53 kilometres on international routes.