Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk revealed today that Russia had hired an assassin to kill an American-Ukrainian citizen who was in Poland. Fortunately, authorities broke up the plot and arrested the hitman.
“Thanks to the truly brilliant action of our services … we detained a Russian citizen recruited by Russian intelligence services,” he said.
The Russian had been hired to kill a man who had both Ukrainian and US passports, Mr Tusk added.
“At the last minute, thanks to the action of the Internal Security Agency and the police, we managed to prevent this execution, this attack,” he said.
A government spokesman said the Russian citizen was taken into custody by Polish authorities on Aug 7.
It represents the first time a person, on the orders of Russia, sought to attack an American citizen on the territory of another Nato country, according to Mr Tusk.
The target isn’t being identified for obvious reasons. Tusk suggested he was causing problems for Putin but didn’t say how.
The American Ukrainian citizen “was uncomfortable for the Putin regime,” Tusk said in a news conference, without elaborating.
The operation was carried out in cooperation with U.S. services, said Tomasz Siemoniak, Poland’s minister overseeing intelligence services. He said the targeted victim was a U.S. citizen “of Ukrainian origin.” Officials did not immediately provide further details.
This is far from the first time Russia has been accused of assassinating someone in another country.
In 2006, British authorities accused Russia of being behind the killing of former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko in London with radioactive polonium. The U.K. also blames Russia for the attempted killing of former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2018 with the nerve agent Novichok.
German authorities said Russia organized the 2019 killing of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a former Chechen rebel commander who was shot in a Berlin park by Vadim Krasikov, a hitman who was later greeted by Putin after he was exchanged in a spy swap.
Just a couple of months ago a Russian artist living in Poland was apparently executed.
An exiled Russian artist and critic of Vladimir Putin has been shot dead in an execution-style killing in Poland.
Semyon Skrepetsky, 44, was shot dead in a car park in the eastern Polish city of Biała Podlaska, close to the border with Belarus, at 10am on Monday. He is believed to have been approximately 500m from the Belarusian consulate.
Two Belarusian nationals aged 33 and 37 were arrested in connection with the murder, according to Marcin Kozak, the spokesman for the district prosecutor’s office in Lublin.
And of course there was the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal in the UK back in 2018.
Mr Skripal, a former Russian military officer and double agent for the British intelligence agencies, was attacked by two Russian GRU officers, Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin, with a third agent Denis Sergeev based in London.
In his report, Lord Hughes of Ombersley, the chairman of the inquiry, said: “The attack on Sergei Skripal by Russia was not, it seems clear, designed simply as revenge against him, but amounted to a public statement, for both international and domestic consumption, that Russia will act decisively in what it regards as its own interests.
The more desperate Putin gets, the more willing he seems to be to take risks he probably shouldn’t take. He didn’t get away with this one but having his hired gun get caught won’t stop him from doing it again.
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