Poland charges two men with spying for Belarus

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Poland has detained and charged two men – a Pole and a Belarusian – accused of conducting espionage on behalf of Belarus.

The suspects allegedly recorded members of the Belarusian minority in Poland and sent the material to Minsk. They are also alleged to have recruited others to carry out subversive activities, including photographing critical infrastructure.

The pair, a 19-year-old Belarusian, who can be named only as Aliaksei B. under Polish privacy law, and a 44-year-old Pole, Rafał G., were detained on 25 June in Warsaw by officers from the Internal Security Agency (ABW).

“The men, paid by Belarusian intelligence, took part in events organised in Warsaw by the Belarusian minority, where they recorded participants and took their photos,” said Jacek Dobrzyński, spokesman for Poland’s security services.

“The gathered materials – passed across the eastern border – were used by [Belarusian President Alexander] Lukashenko’s security services and the regime’s propaganda,” he added.

Belarusians are Poland’s second-largest foreign national group, numbering around 140,000. Among them are many figures opposed to Lukashenko who found sanctuary in Poland after fleeing persecution in Belarus. The Polish and Belarusian governments also have frosty relations.

The suspects’ actions “illustrate how foreign intelligence services are attempting to exploit even legitimate social and civic events to further their own interests”, said the ABW.

The agency added that the aim of the operation was to gather intelligence, intimidate Belarusian exiles and support the propaganda of states hostile to Poland.

In a separate statement, prosecutors also said that the suspects used the Telegram messaging service to “recruit people of various nationalities to carry out sabotage activities” in Poland, including to “photograph critical infrastructure facilities and other places key to the security of the state and its citizens”.

The alleged acts took place in the period from March 2024 until February 2025, in Warsaw and other locations across Poland, prosecutors added. The suspects were purportedly paid in cryptocurrency for carrying out the tasks.

If convicted of espionage, the pair face up to five years in prison. Aliaksei B. has been placed in pretrial detention for three months, while Rafał G. will be under police supervision, with his passport confiscated.

The ABW notes that the charges are part of an investigation that, in November last year, led to the arrest of five other people, three Belarusians and two Ukrainians. Dobrzyński added that the “case is ongoing and further arrests cannot be ruled out”.

In recent years, Poland has detained, charged and in some cases convicted a growing number of people accused of carrying out so-called “hybrid actions” on behalf of Russia and Belarus, including espionage, sabotage and spreading disinformation.

In May, the ABW released figures showing that it launched twice as many espionage investigations in 2025 as in 2024. Over those two years combined, there were more investigations than across the previous three decades.

Such hybrid actions are often not carried out through traditional agents trained at home and sent abroad to conduct missions, but through people already on the ground, often amateurs hired through Telegram and paid in cryptocurrencies.

While most such cases have related to activities orchestrated by Russia, last year a Belarusian man was sentenced to two years and two months in prison in Poland for spying on behalf of Minsk.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: User 699/Wikimedia Commons (under CC BY-SA 4.0)

Olivier Sorgho

Olivier Sorgho is senior editor at Notes from Poland, covering politics, business and society. He previously worked for Reuters.