Poland detains Russian over 'execution' plot in Warsaw: Tusk

Poland arrested a Russian national accused of planning, on Moscow’s orders, to assassinate a Ukrainian-American in Warsaw.

14 Aug 2026 01:30AM

WARSAW: Poland detained a Russian accused by Warsaw of planning to kill a Ukrainian-American dual citizen in the Polish capital on Moscow's orders, Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced Thursday (Aug 13). 

Tusk told journalists the suspect had been arrested last Friday, Aug 7.

"He was inconvenient from the point of view of the Putin regime, and at the last moment ... we managed to prevent this execution," he added.

"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 added.

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," Tusk 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. 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.