A retired US general who attended last summer’s Nato summit in The Hague has claimed the train he was travelling on was attacked five times by Russians.

Ben Hodges told reporters at a security conference in Lithuania this week the roof of the train he was in “exploded” on the day of the Nato summit.  The same thing happened at “five different places between Schiphol and The Hague and Utrecht,” Hodges said.

“Those are not teenagers. Somebody orchestrated attacks on the rail system in the Netherlands… this is from the Russians,” he told reporters.

“Our leaders have to stop treating these things as maybe it was criminal, we don’t have evidence, there was no Russian flag,” he said. “Or even if 50% of it’s from the Russians…. We need to stop treating these like a crime scene. Start putting consequences on the Russians.”

No idea

An NS spokesman told Dutch News that the two departments which would deal with such incidents have “no idea” what the general is talking about. “We do not recognise the situation he is describing,” the spokesman said.

There were some problems on the railways on June 24, the first day of the summit, and two trains travelling from Utrecht to The Hague were stranded because of a break in an overhead power cable.

There was sabotage involved in a separate incident on June 24 which did affect trains from Schiphol to Utrecht and Amsterdam, but not to The Hague. That involved an arson attack on the track in the early hours of the morning.

There was no evidence that a “foreign organisation” was involved, police said at the time.

The NS spokesman said that both incidents had a minimal impact on train services.