The head of a Russian espionage network, indicted in Poland. He was coordinating several dozen people
Russian espionage Photo: Dmitrii Melnikov / Alamy / Profimedia
The National Prosecutor's Office in Poland announced on Tuesday that it has indicted, in absentia, a Russian citizen suspected of conducting espionage and sabotage operations in 2023, reports AFP, taken over by Agerpres.
According to a statement from the prosecutor's office, 28-year-old Mihail Mirgorodski is accused of having created and led, at that time, from Russia, “an organized criminal group involved in espionage and sabotage, which operated on the territory of the Republic of Poland on behalf of the Russian intelligence services.”
The man led a group of at least 30 people and collected intelligence, coordinated attacks against Ukrainians and Belarusian dissidents and distributed pro-Russian leaflets.
Sixteen people belonging to this group were arrested in 2023. Another eight were later charged, six of them at large, according to the national security agency ABW. According to her, the group was coordinated through encrypted Telegram channels, and its members were paid in cryptocurrencies.
This accusation is the latest in a series of accusations made by Poland against Russia and its close ally, Belarus. Last week, two Ukrainians and three Belarusians were indicted for acting in Poland on behalf of Moscow.
In early November, tensions between Moscow and Warsaw, a close ally of Ukraine, further escalated after two incidents on the Polish rail network, which Prime Minister Donald Tusk described as “state terrorism”.
These incidents led Poland to close the last Russian consulate on its territory, leaving only the embassy open, prompting retaliatory measures from Moscow.
In late October, Polish intelligence services reported that since the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022, 55 people suspected of acting on behalf of Moscow had been arrested in Poland.
