According to Bartosz Cichocki, a former Polish ambassador to Ukraine, Moscow exploits declining trust in traditional media to find “lost, rebellious or desperate people” online.
Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) has detained 55 people in recent months on suspicion of working with Russian intelligence.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Tuesday that eight suspects were taken into custody in recent days on allegations they were preparing sabotage.
Officials said most of those detained are foreigners from beyond Poland’s eastern border. Their tasks allegedly included reconnaissance and preparations for sabotage inside Poland.
Investigators said the main targets were elements of critical infrastructure, especially railway lines used to carry weapons and humanitarian aid to Ukraine as Poland has been a key land corridor for military supplies headed to the war zone.
Cichocki told Polish state news agency PAP that motives range from debts and fear of blackmail to personal grievances.
“Russia managed to enlist some of these people without paying them,” he said, recalling Ukrainian cases where small sums were enough to prompt tasks such as photographing troop transports, posting propaganda flyers or marking the geolocation of power facilities.
Cichocki argued that Russia seeks to sow confusion, erode confidence in state resilience, and at times degrade opponents’ defenses.
He pointed to the 2014 explosions at an ammunition depot in Vrbětice in the Czech Republic.
He said Poland should learn from Ukrainian methods that plant doubt in Russian decision makers, while staying within international law.
He cited an article by Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s ambassador to London and former commander-in-chief, that describes how Western intelligence, guidance systems and drone technologies have shaped the battlefield.
Police expert Tomasz Safjański said the scale of Russia-inspired sabotage in Europe is larger than media reports suggest. He cited research conducted at the Fire University in Warsaw that counted 48 arson incidents linked to Russia in Europe since 2022, including 12 in Poland, 12 in Britain, 11 in Germany, and two each in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
He noted that in some cases arson did not require explosives, only damage to select installations.
Safjański urged the public to avoid disinformation and to check worrying rumors against official sources. He advised reporting suspicious situations directly to the police.
Polish authorities have linked a string of high-profile fires to Russian-ordered sabotage. In May last year, a blaze destroyed the Marywilska 44 shopping center in Warsaw. A month earlier, an OBI building supply store in the capital was set on fire, and a fire broke out at an Ikea store in Vilnius, in neighboring Lithuania, also in in May 2024.
The ABW and the National Public Prosecutor’s Office said the arsons were coordinated remotely from Russia.
Among those charged were Ukrainian citizens identified as Danylo B. and Oleksandr H., accused of building and remotely triggering igniters.
Investigators said a Russia-based handler, identified as Oleksandr V., ordered that the Marywilska fire be filmed and the footage posted on propaganda channels.
In August 2023, two Russians were detained after posting thousands of flyers in Poland's southern city of Kraków and the capital Warsaw, encouraging people to sign contracts with the Wagner Group, a Russian private military company.
In July last year, a Russian activist identified as Igor R. was detained in Katowice, southern Poland, on accusations he tried to move a package of explosives from Prague to Ukraine. Prosecutors said his wife, Iryna R., also faced a spying charge.
Earlier this month, the ABW, working with Romania’s intelligence service SRI, arrested a 21-year-old Ukrainian citizen identified as Danylo H., suspected of organizing a team to move explosives through Poland and Romania to Ukraine.
Romanian authorities detained two other Ukrainians linked to the case.
The ABW has previously broken up what it called the largest sabotage network in Poland acting for Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency. In March 2023, sixteen foreigners were detained. Authorities said the group operated near critical logistics hubs such as Przemyśl and Rzeszów in southeastern Poland, scouted infrastructure, monitored troop movements, and prepared to derail trains carrying aid to Ukraine.
Orders were allegedly sent from Russia, and payments were made in cryptocurrency.
Polish authorities judged the risk of an attack too high to continue surveillance and moved in to arrest the suspects.
All the defendants later admitted guilt, and some applied for asylum in Poland in order to avoid deportation, the PAP news agency reported.
Poland’s government minister in charge of security services, Tomasz Siemoniak, said this week that Russian acts of sabotage against his country, including arson attacks and parcel bomb plots, were "a form of terrorism."
(rt/gs)
Source: PAP