Poland has foiled an alleged Russian intelligence plot to assassinate a US citizen in Warsaw, in a case that threatens to deepen fears across NATO that Moscow is expanding its covert campaign against the West.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Polish security services arrested a Russian national allegedly recruited by Russian intelligence to kill a man holding both American and Ukrainian passports.<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks to the truly brilliant action of our services,\u201d Tusk said, the attack was prevented \u201cat the last minute\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Polish prime minister described the alleged target as someone \u201cinconvenient to the Putin regime\u201d and said the case marked the first known instance of Moscow allegedly ordering an attack against an American citizen on the territory of another NATO<\/a> member.<\/p>\n Read more related news:<\/p>\n Kremlin imports North Koreans as Putin runs out of blood amid his failed war<\/a><\/p>\n Poland\u2019s security services<\/a> did not immediately disclose further details of the suspect or the alleged plot.<\/p>\n The arrest comes against a backdrop of growing concern over Russian espionage, sabotage and assassination operations across Europe as the war in Ukraine<\/a> enters a fifth year.<\/p>\n In June, Polish prosecutors said a Russian artist critical of President Vladimir Putin had been shot dead<\/a> in an eastern Polish town. Authorities have not publicly established that the killing was ordered by Moscow.<\/p>\n Other alleged Russian operations have been uncovered across Europe. French authorities previously said they had disrupted a plot targeting Russian dissident Vladimir Osechkin, while German officials have announced investigations into alleged Russian plans targeting a defence executive whose company supplies Ukraine<\/a> and a Ukrainian military official.<\/p>\n The most notorious British case remains the 2018 Salisbury poisoning, in which British authorities concluded that two Russian military intelligence officers used the nerve agent<\/a> Novichok in an attempt to assassinate former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia.<\/p>\n Western intelligence officials have increasingly warned that Moscow\u2019s campaign extends beyond conventional espionage.<\/p>\n NATO governments have reported suspected sabotage targeting infrastructure, while countries bordering Russia<\/a> and Belarus have hardened security around energy installations, transport networks and other critical assets.<\/p>\n Lithuanian officials have warned of the possibility of a staged or \u201cfalse flag\u201d attack involving drones, while Poland, Latvia and Estonia have raised concerns that Russia could use covert operations<\/a> to test the alliance\u2019s willingness to respond.<\/p>\n The Baltic states are particularly exposed. Lithuania has increased protection around critical infrastructure, while Latvia has strengthened security around energy facilities, dams and underground gas storage.<\/p>\n Russia has dismissed such warnings as alarmism. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has described claims of planned covert attacks as \u201cscare stories\u201d intended to justify hostility towards Moscow.<\/p>\n European governments are increasingly unwilling to take that argument at face value.<\/p>\n The Warsaw case, if confirmed, would represent a striking escalation: an alleged Russian operation targeting<\/a> an American citizen not in the United States, but inside the territory of a NATO ally.<\/p>\n That raises a question extending well beyond Poland. If Moscow is prepared to use intelligence assets, proxies and covert violence inside allied territory, European governments must decide whether these incidents remain isolated criminal cases<\/a> \u2014 or evidence of a broader confrontation already taking place beneath the threshold of open war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Poland has foiled an alleged Russian intelligence plot to assassinate a US citizen in Warsaw, in a case…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[227,323,9,122,2976,331],"class_list":["post-21228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-poland","tag-defence","tag-nato","tag-poland","tag-politics","tag-russia-ukraine","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}