A Russian plan to kill a Ukrainian American citizen in Warsaw was thwarted by Poland before it could be carried out, the Polish prime minister has said.
Donald Tusk said it was the first time that “someone on the order of Russia” had sought to attack a US citizen on the territory of another Nato country.
Western officials have previously warned that Russia stepped up a campaign of targeted killings since Vladimir Putin’s ۲۰۲۲ invasion of Ukraine, saying they had disrupted several plots across Europe. But Tusk said this incident was unprecedented.
The suspect, who was allegedly recruited by Russia’s secret services, was detained by Polish authorities on ۷ August. He will be held in custody for three months, the Warsaw police said in a statement.
The American Ukrainian citizen “was uncomfortable for the Putin regime”, Tusk said in a news conference, without elaborating.
The operation was carried out in cooperation with US services, said Tomasz Siemoniak, Poland’s minister overseeing intelligence services. He said the targeted victim was a US citizen “of Ukrainian origin”. Officials did not immediately provide further details.
The Russian foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The US state department said it was aware of the reports but said it had no additional information.
Russia has long been accused of targeting its enemies abroad, including by using rare poisons. But intelligence officials previously told the Associated Press that Russia’s security services are now more brazen in their choice of targets, going after Russian activists and foreign supporters of Ukraine as well as military defectors.
Tusk said: “We must assume that the Putin regime will try to eliminate people who are inconvenient for various reasons, in various places around the world.” He added that Poland and other countries must be prepared to counter such actions.
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Western officials see the campaign as connected to Russia’s broader efforts to undermine European countries that support Ukraine. The AP has mapped about ۲۰۰ acts of sabotage, arson and other disruption across Europe since the start of the war in Ukraine that officials have linked to Russia. Putin told the AP in June that Russia was not waging a sabotage campaign against Europe.
In ۲۰۰۶, British authorities accused Russia of being behind the killing in London of the former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko with radioactive polonium. The UK also blames Russia for the attempted killing of the former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in ۲۰۱۸ with the nerve agent novichok.
German authorities said Russia had organised the ۲۰۱۹ killing of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a former Chechen rebel commander who was shot in a Berlin park by Vadim Krasikov, a hitman who was later greeted by Putin after he was exchanged in a spy swap.
In June, a Russian artist who was critical of Putin was shot and killed at close range near his home in eastern Poland. Tusk said at the time that the killing of Robert Kuzovkov, known by the pseudonym Semyon Skrepetsky, had the hallmarks of a political assassination. He suggested it was possible Russia was behind it but Polish officials have not yet attributed it to Moscow.
Last year French officials disrupted a plot that they believe was aimed at killing Vladimir Osechkin, a Russian exile who lives under police protection and works to help military defectors flee Putin’s war. Lithuanian officials also disrupted a plot last year to kill a Lithuanian supporter of Ukraine and another against a Russian activist. Officials in Germany have similarly broken up two plots: one to target the head of a German weapons company supplying Ukraine, the other against a Ukrainian military official.
Polish authorities arrested a man in ۲۰۲۴ in what they said was a plot to assassinate the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That year, a Russian helicopter pilot who defected was killed in Spain – Russian operatives were the prime suspects.
“This campaign is not by accident or chance,” a senior European intelligence official previously told the AP. “There is political authorisation.”
