Man arrested over alleged Russian plot to kill American citizen in Poland

In short:

Polish authorities say they have thwarted an attempt to execute a Ukrainian-American dual national on its soil.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk says the attempt is the "first situation of its kind" where Russia has ordered the killing of an American citizen on NATO territory.

The Kremlin has always denied any involvement in such attacks. 

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk says authorities have arrested a man over an alleged Russian plot to kill a Ukrainian-American man.

Mr Tusk accused Moscow of attempting to execute an American citizen on NATO soil and said Warsaw thwarted the plan in its final stages.

"He was inconvenient from the point of view of the Putin regime, and at the last moment … we managed to prevent this execution," he said, speaking at a press conference in Warsaw.

"This is the first situation of its kind in which someone, acting on Russian orders, decided to carry out an attack against an American citizen on the territory of another NATO country."

He told journalists the suspect was taken into custody on Friday, August 7.

Mr Tusk said agents of the Polish Internal Security Agency (ABW) and police had arrested the suspect, with cooperation from American services.

"We have to accept the assumption that the Putin regime will try to eliminate people who are inconvenient for various reasons," he said.

Warsaw, he added, "will likely come under similar pressure again". 

Poland, a NATO and EU member state along the alliance's Eastern flank, has accused Russia of "sabotage" on several occasions since Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

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

Several opponents of the Russian authorities have been victims of attacks abroad, including in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Lithuania.