Poland charges Colombian with terrorism over arson attacks on behalf of Russia

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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’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) says that the 27-year-old man, who was last month convicted of arson in the Czech Republic, was responsible for two fires that occurred in warehouses in central Poland last year.

According to the ABW, the incidents were part of a large-scale operation by Russia that “recruited people of Latin American origin with military experience” to commit arson and record the acts for use in Russian disinformation campaigns.

The man is accused of carrying out arson attacks on two construction warehouses in Warsaw and Radom in May 2024. In both cases, the buildings were successfully set on fire, but were later extinguished by firefighters.

“These actions were commissioned, supervised and financed by a person associated with the Russian intelligence services,” the ABW wrote in a statement, before explaining that the suspect received information about the purpose of the attack and how to carry it out, including instructions on how to prepare a Molotov cocktail.

The Russian intelligence services “systematically and on a large scale recruited people of Latin American origin with military experience to conduct reconnaissance of designated locations, then set fire to selected buildings and document the damage,” the ABW continued.

The photos and recordings of the acts were then used by Russian media for propaganda purposes.

According to the agency, the pattern of these crimes is “consistent with similar incidents identified in many countries in Central and Eastern Europe”.

Last year, Poland and other countries in the region suffered a series of acts of sabotage, among them a fire that destroyed Warsaw’s largest shopping centre.

The authorities have blamed Russia, whose intelligence services recruited and hired people living in those countries – often Ukrainian and Belarusian immigrants – to carry out the attacks.

In May, Poland announced that it would close Russia’s consulate in the city of Kraków in response to evidence that Moscow was behind the fire that last year destroyed Warsaw’s largest shopping centre on Marywilska Street.

In October 2024, foreign minister Radosław Sikorski ordered Russia to close its consulate in the city of Poznań and declared its staff personae non gratae in Poland in response to various forms of “hybrid warfare” by Moscow against Poland, including sabotage, cyberattacks and migratory pressure on its eastern border.

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: Dariusz Borowicz / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

Agnieszka Wądołowska

Agnieszka Wądołowska is deputy editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. She is a member of the European Press Prize’s preparatory committee. She was 2022 Fellow at the Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program at City University of New York. In 2024, she graduated from the Advanced Leadership Programme for Top Talents at the Center for Leadership. She has previously contributed to Gazeta Wyborcza, Wysokie Obcasy and Duży Format.