On Aug. 7, Polish security services detained a Russian citizen who had been recruited by Russian intelligence services to organize the killing in Warsaw of a person with U.S. and Ukrainian citizenship, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced at a news conference on Aug. 14, according to Reuters.
Tusk said the target was a dual national who was inconvenient for Vladimir Putin’s regime. He said Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) and police had prevented “this execution, this attack," adding that he was not authorized to disclose the name of the detainee or of the intended victim.
Local radio station RMF FM, citing unofficial sources, reported that the intended target was a defense industry entrepreneur who supplied products to Ukraine. The alleged perpetrator was said to be a 29-year-old resident of Donbas, the eastern Ukrainian region partly occupied by Russia since 2014. He was detained in Warsaw’s Mokotów District by officers from the Warsaw police department who are responsible for combating terrorism, killings, and criminal violence, with support from the country’s counterterrorism service.
Tusk stressed that this was the first case in which someone acting on Russia’s behalf had attempted to assassinate a U.S. citizen in another NATO country.
“We must assume that the Putin regime will try to eliminate people who are inconvenient for various reasons, in various places around the world,” Tusk said. “Which is why our actions in this matter will be extremely intensive, so as to prevent any further attempts against citizens of Poland or other countries, in our country.”
Tusk said he had held a lengthy discussion on the case with the minister coordinating Poland’s security services, adding that Poland would likely continue to face similar pressure in the future. “We will have to work hard to avoid such scenarios,” Tusk summed up.
In June, Semyon Skrepetsky (real name Robert Kuzovkov), a 44-year-old Russian opposition artist, was shot dead in a planned attack in the Polish city of Biała Podlaska.
