Polish authorities stopped an alleged Russian-backed plot to assassinate a Ukrainian American citizen in Warsaw before it could be carried out, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Thursday. He described the case as the first known instance in which “someone on the order of Russia” sought to target a US citizen on the soil of another NATO member state.
Western officials have warned that Moscow has intensified a campaign of targeted killings since President Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and they have reported disrupting multiple plots across Europe. Tusk, however, said the Warsaw case stood apart as unprecedented.
The suspect, accused of being recruited by Russian secret services, was arrested by Polish authorities on Aug. 7.
Warsaw police said in a statement that the suspect will remain in custody for three months.
Tusk told a news conference that the intended target, an American Ukrainian citizen, “was uncomfortable for the Putin regime,” but he did not provide further explanation.
Tomasz Siemoniak, the Polish minister responsible for overseeing intelligence services, said the operation was conducted in cooperation with US services.
Siemoniak identified the intended victim as a US citizen “of Ukrainian origin.” Officials did not immediately release additional 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.
Western countries believe Russia seeks to undermine Ukraine’s allies
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.
“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 on Thursday. He said that Poland and others must be prepared to counter such actions.
Western officials see the campaign as connected to Russia’s broader efforts to undermine European countries that support Ukraine. The AP has mapped about 200 acts of sabotage, arson and other disruption across Europe since the start of the war that officials have linked to Russia.
President Vladimir Putin told the AP in June that Russia is not waging a sabotage campaign against Europe.
In 2006, British authorities accused Russia of being behind the killing of former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko in London with radioactive polonium.
The UK also blames Russia for the attempted killing of former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2018 with the nerve agent Novichok.
German authorities said Russia organized the 2019 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 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.
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 2024 in what they said was a plot to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. That year, a Russian helicopter pilot who defected was killed in Spain — with Russian operatives the prime suspects.
“This campaign is not by accident or chance,” a senior European intelligence official previously told the AP. “There is political authorization.”
