Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Aug. 13 that a Russian plot to kill a man who held dual Ukrainian and U.S. citizenship in Warsaw has been thwarted.
Tusk said a Russian citizen was arrested in Poland on Aug. 7. He said it was the first time there had been a plan to kill a U.S. citizen on the territory of another NATO country by “someone acting on Russian orders.”
Polish government minister Tomasz Siemoniak, who oversees the country’s intelligence services, said the operation to obstruct the assassination attempt was fully coordinated with agencies in the United States.
Siemoniak said the target was a U.S. citizen “of Ukrainian origin.”
In a statement, Tusk gave some details about the operation, which was conducted by Poland’s ABW domestic intelligence agency.
“Thanks to a truly brilliant operation by our services—the Internal Security Agency, with support from the police—on Aug. 7, we detained a Russian citizen recruited by the Russian intelligence services,” Tusk said.
“His assignment was to carry out an execution here in Warsaw targeting a person who holds both American and Ukrainian citizenship.”
Tusk said the intended target “was regarded as troublesome by Putin’s regime.”
He did not name the Russian national, or the intended victim.
“I am not authorized to disclose any names, but this is the first such case in which someone acting on Russian orders has decided to carry out an attack against an American citizen on the territory of another NATO country, here in Poland, in Warsaw,” Tusk said.
Tusk Thanks US Agencies
Tusk also thanked the U.S. intelligence services for what he said was their excellent work in preventing the killing.
“Unfortunately, we must assume that Putin’s regime will attempt to eliminate people it considers troublesome for various reasons, in different parts of the world,” Tusk said.
The Warsaw police, in a separate statement, said the suspect would be held in custody for three months.
The U.S. State Department said it was aware of the reports but had no additional information.
The Russian government has not commented on the allegations.
On Aug. 14, Russian state-controlled TASS news agency reported that a Russian national, Georgy Pirogov, had been jailed for 23 years for spying for the Polish intelligence services.
TASS, quoting the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), said Pirogov traveled to Poland and, in April 2022, met with Polish military intelligence and was “tasked with collecting and transmitting classified information about advanced weapons systems used by the Russian Armed Forces during the Special Military Operation,” a reference to Moscow’s military offensive against Ukraine.
It was not clear whether Pirogov was in custody in Moscow or was sentenced in absentia.
Whether Pirogov had a legal representative who could comment on his behalf was also not immediately clear.
Relations between Russia and Poland—which has been a NATO member since 1999—have worsened considerably in recent months.
Robert Kuzovkov—who was fatally shot in eastern Poland—poses for a photo with one of his paintings, four days earlier, outside the Russian Embassy in Berlin, Germany, on June 12, 2026. Vasily Krestyaninov/SOTA via AP
Russian Caricaturist Murdered
In June, a Russian caricaturist and Putin critic, Robert Kuzovkov, who used the pseudonym Semyon Skrepetsky, was fatally shot at his home in Biala Podlaska, eastern Poland.
In that case, neither the Polish prosecutors nor Tusk’s government directly accused Russia of being behind the murder, although investigators told Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza the killer must have been a professional assassin and used a silenced weapon.
Last month, Russia dismissed reports in Western media that it was planning an attack on Poland. However, Polish Deputy Prime Minister Radek Sikorski pointed out that Russia had claimed that it had no intention of invading Ukraine in the days and weeks before it invaded in February 2022.
On Nov. 18, 2025, Tusk said that two Ukrainians collaborating with Russian intelligence were responsible for the sabotage of the Warsaw-Lublin railway line.
In 2024, Poland’s national prosecutor said police arrested a Polish man who they said was involved in a plot to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
English (US) · 
Turkish (TR) · 