Who was behind the arson attacks on railways before the Olympics?

FOR MONTHS French officials have been increasingly worried about a threat to the Olympic games. French and allied intelligence officers have worked around the clock to watch for possible attacks. On July 21st French authorities arrested a Russian chef in Paris with ties to Russian intelligence services on suspicion of seeking to cause “large-scale…destabilisation” of the games. Overnight on July 26th destabilisation came regardless. A series of apparent arson attacks on three of the main high-speed rail routes to Paris brought serious disruption to trains on the eve of the games’ opening ceremony. The perpetrator is unknown.

SNCF, France’s national rail company, said that a series of fires had amounted to a “massive attack aimed at paralysing the network”. Images published by local authorities showed fire damage to cables running alongside the track. The cables were burnt and then cut, according to Matthieu Chabanel, the chairman and CEO of SNCF. The sabotage appeared designed to cause maximum damage by targeting signalling boxes operating major high-speed lines: at Courtalain, which sits on the Atlantic line, from Paris to the coast; Croisilles, on the line from Paris to Belgium; and Pagny-sur-Moselle, on the Paris-Strasbourg line. A fourth attack on the Paris-Marseille line was interrupted, with the attackers fleeing.

The disruption has been heavy, affecting around 800,000 passengers. French broadcasters showed scenes of railway stations packed with stranded passengers, ahead of one of the busiest summer-holiday travel weekends. A quarter of the trains between Paris and London were cancelled until Sunday. Only one train in three on the Atlantic line was expected to run on the afternoon of July 26th, said Patrice Vergriete, France’s transport minister. Gabriel Attal, the French caretaker prime minister, said that the operation was “prepared [and] co-ordinated”, with the targeting of nerve centres indicating that the attackers had inside knowledge of the rail network. Mr Attal declined to name any suspects, but said that the intelligence agencies and law enforcement had been “mobilised”. The Paris public prosecutor opened an inquiry into acts designed to “harm the fundamental interests of the nation”.

Others were happier to point the finger. Israel Katz, Israel’s foreign minister, said in a post on X (without offering evidence) that the sabotage was “planned and executed under the influence of Iran’s axis of evil and radical Islam”. A day earlier Mr Katz had written to his French counterparts warning of an Iranian plot against Israeli athletes and tourists at the games. Israel’s cyber-security agency had also said that Iranian hackers were behind the publication of information and photographs on Israeli athletes as part of a campaign of intimidation. Yet it would be unusual if Iran had decided to engage in such large-scale sabotage against a major international event. In the past, Iranian spies engaged in subversion in Europe have tended to focus on Iranian dissidents, Israeli interests or Jewish targets.

Other suspects abound. Two security sources told France 24, a state-funded broadcaster, that the method of attack was suggestive of far-left militants or environmental activists. Suspicion has also fallen on Russia. Over the past year, Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, has been increasingly supportive of Ukraine in its war with Russia, promising Mirage 2000-5 fighter jets in June. Russia, in turn, has stepped up a disinformation and sabotage blitz across Europe—including in France. In June coffins draped with the French flag and bearing the message “French soldiers of Ukraine” were left at the Eiffel tower. French intelligence officials said that they believed Russia was responsible for that, as well as the earlier graffitiing of 250 Stars of David on walls in Paris in November.

On June 3rd France arrested a Russian-Ukrainian dual national who was wounded after attempting to make a bomb in his room near Charles de Gaulle airport. The man arrested on July 21st had extensive connections to officers of the FSB and GRU, a pair of Russian intelligence agencies, according to a joint investigation by the Insider, Le Monde and Der Spiegel, three news outlets. He had apparently told his supervisors that “the French will have an opening ceremony like no other” and had boasted to neighbours in Bulgaria of his role in disrupting the games. John Hultquist of Mandiant, a cyber-security firm, points out that the GRU probed computer networks associated with railways prior to the Olympic games in Tokyo in 2020.

Despite the railway sabotage, by mid-afternoon fans began to stream through security checkpoints towards the river Seine for the opening ceremony. Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, said on July 26th that he had no concerns about the security of the games, pointing out that 180 other intelligence services were involved in protecting them. French officials, who have spent years planning for a highly ambitious opening ceremony along the Seine despite the obvious security headaches this has caused, have struck a defiant note. “We are not going to let ourselves be destabilised,” says Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, the minister for the games. “We had anticipated all these scenarios.”

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