Authorities in Poland and Germany have arrested at least five of their citizens in recent days and accused them of spying for Russia or offering to help Moscow carry out violence on European soil, including a “ possible attack” on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. .
The arrests add to concerns about the Kremlin’s clandestine network in the West and its use of foreign nationals, including violent criminals and football hooligans, to sow terror or even possibly Kill opponents who are hiding abroad.
The Polish National Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement that a Polish citizen, identified as Pawel K., was detained on Wednesday. It said he had offered to assist Russian agents in a possible plot to kill Mr. Zelensky.
It gave few details, other than to say that he had “declared his readiness to act for the military intelligence service of the Russian Federation and established contacts with citizens of the Russian Federation directly involved to the war in Ukraine”.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland said on Friday that police had also arrested two Polish citizens for the crime attack a top assistant attacked Russian opposition campaigner Aleksei A. Navalny outside his aide’s home in Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital, last month with a hammer. The Polish leader said a Belarusian citizen, who is believed to have ordered the attack on behalf of Moscow, had also been arrested. Mr. Navalny passed away in a Russian prison in February.
“There will be no leniency towards those who collaborate with Russian agencies,” Mr. Tusk said in a statement on Friday. He vowed to stamp out “all betrayals and destabilization efforts.”
The Lithuanian prosecutor general’s office said in a statement that two Poles suspected of assaulting Mr. Navalny’s assistant, Leonid Volkov, on March 12 were detained in Warsaw on April 3. The statement did not mention a Belarusian.
The Polish national prosecutor’s office said the man named Pawel K. had been assigned a task “including collecting and providing information” about Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport, a Polish airport near the border with Ukraine that Mr. Zelensky often passes through on his trips. in another country.
Dmitri S. Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, declined to comment Friday on a call with reporters about the possible assassination attempt on Mr. Zelensky.
The airport, protected by Patriot missiles manned by US military personnel, serves as a vital transit hub for Western weapons to Ukraine.
Ukraine’s intelligence service said in a statement that it had provided information to Polish authorities about the detained individual. It added that his plan was to collect and pass information to Russian military intelligence about the airport to “help Russian special services plan a possible assassination of the General President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky during his stay in Poland.
The arrest in Poland occurred when German authorities arrested two citizens with dual German and Russian nationality on suspicion of spying for Moscow and plotting to sabotage aid to Ukraine by blowing up Western military infrastructure.
The series of arrests comes as many European officials worry about the extent to which Moscow has infiltrated European Union countries with spies and assassins, and has found an easily accessible hiring network among organized and extremist criminal groups, ready to carry out attacks. and the Kremlin’s actions to intimidate its enemies.
Mr. Tusk said the two Polish men who attacked Mr. Volkov with a hammer had been running in “extreme” circles, a term for fanatical soccer fans who are notorious for sometimes engaging in violence or association with extreme right-wing political causes.
Mr. Volkov thanked Polish and Lithuanian authorities for handling his case in a post Friday on social media platform X. “It is important to investigate and expose all orders from Putin to the one with the hammer,” he said.
The Insider, a Russia-focused investigative agency, recently identified a man who was threatening a prominent anti-Kremlin Russian economist and his wife in Buenos Aires as a Polish citizen and share that information with Polish authorities. speak in a report on Friday.
During the investigation, Polish authorities discovered that the man’s handler was also connected to the men who traveled to Lithuania last month to assault Mr. Volkov, The Insider reported.
February killing of a Russian helicopter pilot in a coastal town in Spain months after he defected to Ukraine last summer has also raised fears of retaliation on European soil against enemies of the Kremlin. The perpetrators, whose identities remain unknown, shot him six times in a parking garage before a car ran over him.
Last year, British authorities arrested five Bulgarian citizens and accused them of carrying out surveillance and information gathering activities for Russian intelligence. British authorities charged a sixth Bulgarian national in connection with these activities in February.
Tomas Dapkus Contributing reports from Vilnius, Lithuania, and Alina Lobzina from Berlin.
