On Thursday, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk made a striking announcement: authorities had detained a Russian national allegedly hired by Moscow to assassinate a Ukrainian-American citizen deemed troublesome by Russia.
Tusk detailed that the arrest was made last Friday, with the intended victim residing in Warsaw, the nation’s capital. This revelation was reported by Reuters.
“Our intelligence and police services performed admirably,” Tusk remarked, crediting them for thwarting the plot just in time. The detainee, he explained, was a Russian enlisted by Russian intelligence, targeting an individual with dual Ukrainian and American citizenship. “Owing to the intervention by the Internal Security Agency and the police, we were able to avert this intended execution, this attack.”
The News Media has approached the U.S. State Department for an official statement.
This file photo shows Russian President Vladimir Putin presiding over a gathering on the missile cruiser Varyag in the remote Sakhalin region of Russia, dated Wednesday, August 12, 2026. Previously, Putin has claimed that Russia is not conducting sabotage operations against Europe. (Reuters)
Tusk also said Thursday that it was the first time that “someone on the order of Russia” sought to attack an American citizen on the territory of another NATO country, The Associated Press reported.
The operation was carried out in cooperation with U.S. services, Tomasz Siemoniak, Poland’s minister overseeing intelligence services, told the AP.
The news agency reported that it has mapped about 200 acts of sabotage, arson and other disruption across Europe since the start of the Ukraine war that officials have linked to Russia. President Vladimir Putin claimed to the AP in May that Russia is not waging a sabotage campaign against Europe.
FILE – Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk speaks to the media at the site where an unidentified flying object, believed to be a Russian missile, fell after violating Polish airspace in a field near Tarnawa Kolonia, near Lublin, Poland, on July 30, 2026. (Jakub Orzechowski/Agencja Wyborcza.pl/Reuters)
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 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 which 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.
FILE – Tusk said the alleged target was a citizen in Warsaw, Poland. (dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images)
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.