Poland detains Russian over Warsaw killing plot, Tusk says

Poland detained a Russian national accused by Warsaw of planning to kill a Ukrainian-American dual citizen in the Polish capital on Moscow's orders, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Thursday, August 13.

Tusk said the suspect was arrested on Friday, August 7, by Poland's Internal Security Agency and police, with cooperation from American services. He told journalists that the intended target was “inconvenient from the point of view of the Putin regime” and that authorities had prevented the alleged “execution” at the last moment.

Tusk said it was “the first situation of its kind” in which someone acting on Russian orders had decided to carry out an attack against an American citizen on the territory of another NATO country.

He said Poland had to assume that “the Putin regime will try to eliminate people who are inconvenient for various reasons” and that Warsaw would likely face similar pressure again.

Poland, a NATO and EU member on the alliance's eastern flank, has accused Russia of sabotage several times since Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Moscow has denied involvement in attacks on opponents of the Russian authorities abroad.

In June, Russian caricaturist and Putin critic Semyon Skrepetsky, whose real name was Robert Kuzovkov, was shot dead in eastern Poland. Tusk later called that killing a “political murder.”