Polish authorities detained nine foreign nationals accused of monitoring deliveries of weapons and aid to Ukraine, saying the surveillance network had links with Russian intelligence and aimed to sabotage shipments.
(Bloomberg) — Polish authorities detained nine foreign nationals accused of monitoring deliveries of weapons and aid to Ukraine, saying the surveillance network had links with Russian intelligence and aimed to sabotage shipments.
Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski said agents from Poland’s Internal Security Agency seized equipment including cameras, electronic devices and GPS transmitters mounted on transports. Evidence indicated that the suspected operatives were receiving payments from Russian special services, he said.
“The suspects were also preparing for sabotage activities, with the goal of paralyzing the transport of equipment, weapons and assistance for Ukraine,” Kaminski told reporters in Warsaw Thursday. There was no immediate official response from the Kremlin to the allegations.
The network was active in Poland’s southeastern Subcarpathian region bordering Ukraine, which has become a major logistics hub for military and humanitarian support, authorities said. Some 10,000 US troops are based in the region, whose regional capital, Rzeszow, has become a stopping point for world leaders en route to Kyiv.
The suspects, who weren’t identified, come from “across the eastern border,” Kaminski said — adding that six had been charged with espionage, with the three other cases pending. To the east, Poland borders Ukraine and Belarus, while it also shares frontiers with Lithuania and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
The interior minister said the probe is “dynamic and constantly developing.” The operatives may have been preparing propaganda activities aimed at destabilizing Polish-Ukrainian relations by generating hostile attitudes toward NATO and Warsaw’s support for Ukraine, he said.
(Corrects spelling of interior minister’s name from second paragraph.)
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