Poland has expelled 45 “Russian spies pretending to be diplomats”, the interior minister has announced. It has also detained an employee of Warsaw’s municipal authorities on suspicion of conducting espionage on behalf of Russia.
In response, Russia’s ambassador to Poland, Sergey Andreev, who was summoned to the Polish foreign ministry today, has denied the accusations and warned that Moscow will retaliate by expelling Polish diplomats.
This does not mean that Russian is Preparing to Invade Poland but it may be a sign that Russian Diplomats may be Preparing to leave the Country for some reason.
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) March 22, 2022
This morning, following media reports of the impending expulsions, the spokesman for Poland’s security services, Stanisław Żaryn, confirmed that “45 individuals…Russian secret services officers and persons related to them enjoying diplomatic status in Poland” were being “urgently expelled”.
Their actions were “designed to undermine the stability of Poland and its allies in the international arena and pose a threat to the interests and security of our country”, said Żaryn, noting that this violated both Polish law and the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
Among them were spies posing as cultural attaches or consular employees who were in fact seeking to recruit agents and transmit information back to Moscow, reports RMF24, citing inside sources.
They were “spies pretending to be diplomats”, tweeted interior minister Mariusz Kamiński. “With full consistency and determination, we are breaking up the intelligence operations of the Russian secret services in our country.”
Polska wydala 45 rosyjskich szpiegów udających dyplomatów. Z pełną konsekwencją i determinacją rozbijamy agenturę rosyjskich służb specjalnych w naszym kraju.
— Mariusz Kamiński (@Kaminski_M_) March 23, 2022
Żaryn also revealed that one of the alleged Russian spies was discovered after a Polish national was detained last Thursday on suspicion of conducting espionage on behalf of Russia. He has been charged and remanded in custody for three months.
That arrest, which was only announced today, concerns an employee of the archives in Warsaw’s registry office. The position gave him access to documents that “posed a threat to both the internal and the external security of Poland”, said Żaryn.
The man is suspected of providing copies of documents to Russian intelligence and of performing checks on specific people, including foreigners living in Poland, reports RMF24, citing inside sources.
Journalist Mariusz Gierszewski of Radio Zet established that the man has worked at Warsaw’s registry office since 2005, before which he had also been employed for two years in the office of then-mayor Lech Kaczyński.
Government spokesman Piotr Müller also announced this morning that the Russian ambassador, Sergey Andreev, had been summoned to the Polish foreign ministry in relation to the expelled diplomats.
Speaking outside the ministry afterwards, Andreev said that there are no grounds for the accusations made against Russian diplomats, reports Onet.
He also warned that “there will be reciprocity; we will expel Polish diplomats”, reports Polsat News. Last April, amid growing tensions between Poland and Russia, Andreev declared that relations were “at their lowest since World War Two”.
Last year, Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) detained two men accused of helping a Russian spy network, amid a reported intensification of foreign intelligence activity in the country. Poland also accused Russia of being behind the hacking of senior officials.
Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has long warned that Russia poses a threat both to its neighbouring former-Soviet states and to Europe as a whole. It argues that the recent invasion of Ukraine has vindicated its concerns.
Poland has been among the strongest voices calling for tougher sanctions to be placed on Russia and for the international community to hold the Kremlin to account for war crimes in Ukraine.
Those tensions have escalated further this week, after senior Kremlin figure Dmitry Medvedev penned a 700-word post accusing Poland of “evil, vulgar” and “pathological Russophobia”. Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, yesterday accused Russia of “behaving in exactly the same way as Hitler, as the German SS”.
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
