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The player for a first division Polish team was
taken into custody in the southern Polish region of Silesia,
prosecutors said in a statement. The player and his team were
not publicly identified. Prosecutors said he had arrived in
Poland in October, 2021.
A key hub for western military supplies to Ukraine, Poland says
it has become a major target for Russian spies and it accuses
Moscow of trying to destabilise the country.
"Russian spies are falling in one by one!" Justice Minister
Zbigniew Ziobro wrote on Twitter. "A spy who acted under the
guise of an athlete was caught. The Russian was a player of a
first division club."
According to prosecutors he carried out activities including
identifying critical infrastructure, for which he received
payment. He will be kept in pre-trial detention and could face
up to 10 years in prison.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Moscow
had demanded an explanation from Poland over its arrest of
Russian citizens, state news agency RIA reported.
In March Poland said it had broken up a Russian espionage
network operating in the country and detained nine people it
said were preparing acts of sabotage and monitoring rail routes
to Ukraine.
In April it said it was introducing a temporary 200 metre
exclusion zone around its Swinoujscie Liquefied Natural Gas
(LNG) terminal, citing concerns about Russian espionage.
(Reporting by Alan Charlish; Additional reporting by Pawel
Florkiewicz in Warsaw and Felix Light in Tblisi; Editing by
Peter Graff)
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