“It’s a piece of France they’re attacking”: Coordinated sabotage of TGV link to Paris disrupts first day of Olympic Games

“A huge attack to paralyze the network,” is how the French railway company SNCF describes the wave of sabotage that hit its network on Friday morning. The saboteurs set fire to three locations around the same time, and a fourth sabotage attempt was narrowly averted. The damage to the rail network is causing serious delays on connections between Paris and the east, west and north of France, on the day the Olympic Games begin. Belgian train passengers who want to travel to Paris are also experiencing serious disruption. Fewer trains are running than usual, and those that are running are delayed by about an hour.

The SNCF has already had to cancel several trains on the affected routes. It advises all passengers not to go to a station for the time being. The high-speed trains that are still running to Paris will have to take a detour: they will leave the high-speed network and continue their journey on the ‘normal’ rail network. No trains will depart from the Paris Montparnasse station until 1 p.m. The Eurostar on the routes between London and Brussels and the French capital is also running with serious delays. Eurostar is canceling a quarter of all high-speed trains that serve Paris this weekend. Jean-Pierre Farandou, CEO of the SNCF, estimates that a quarter of a million passengers will be affected today, and around 800,000 by the end of the weekend.

French Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete condemned the acts of sabotage, which he described as “coordinated actions”. The arson attacks have cut off high-speed rail links to Paris from the north, west and east of the country, just hours before the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games is due to start. The fourth, averted, attack would have put the line to the south out of action. “It’s a piece of France that they’ve attacked,” Farandou said of the attacks. “It’s the French they’re attacking.” Thousands of employees will do everything they can to keep disruption to travellers to a minimum. “It should have been a party,” said a combative Farandou. “We’re not throwing in the towel.”

Hybrid war

The Games in Paris are thus in danger of getting off to a false start, despite the extensive security measures taken by the French. The security services fear attacks by terrorist groups such as ISKP, of which Belgian investigators arrested a cell on Thursday, partly with an eye to the Olympic Games. But there are also threats from Russia. For example, the French police arrested a Russian chef on Sunday who had lived in Paris for fourteen years. He is suspected of having planned “large-scale” and “destabilizing” actions during the Games.

Russian chief Kirill Griaznov said in a wiretapped phone call with his contact at Russia’s FSB intelligence service that “the French will have an opening ceremony like they’ve never seen before,” Le Monde reports. Russian agents across Europe have been carrying out increasingly frequent sabotage operations since the war in Ukraine, which fit into Russia’s hybrid war. In addition to heavy weaponry, Moscow is also using disinformation and sabotage in its fight against Ukraine and its NATO allies. Earlier arson attacks on shopping malls in Warsaw and Vilnius, a London courier company and a weapons factory in Berlin have also been attributed to Russia.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmamin said Wednesday that police had arrested several other Russians. “We must ensure that sport is not used for espionage and cyber attacks, to criticize France and the French or even to lie about them,” Darmamin said.