Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on August 13 that authorities had disrupted an alleged Russian-directed plan to kill a United States citizen of Ukrainian origin in Warsaw. A suspect was arrested on Friday, August 7, before the alleged attack could be carried out, according to Tusk’s account.
Tusk said Russian secret services had recruited the suspect. He described the intended victim as someone viewed unfavorably by the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin, but officials did not publicly identify the person or provide further details about the alleged motive. The assertions were made by Polish officials; the supplied report said Russia’s Foreign Ministry had not immediately answered a request for comment.
Tomasz Siemoniak, the Polish minister responsible for intelligence services, said the operation involved cooperation with US services. He confirmed that the person allegedly targeted held US citizenship and was of Ukrainian origin. Officials did not disclose the suspect’s identity, the evidence underpinning the accusation, or the alleged method being prepared.
Tusk characterized the case as unprecedented: an alleged attempt, ordered from Russia, against an American on the territory of another NATO member. That was the prime minister’s assessment of the episode’s significance, not an independently adjudicated conclusion. No trial outcome or formal finding of Russian state responsibility was included in the available material.
The allegation emerged amid repeated Western warnings about Russian-linked violence and disruption in Europe since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022. Officials in several countries have reported interrupting plots against Russian activists, military defectors, Ukrainian officials and supporters of Ukraine. The Associated Press has catalogued about 200 episodes of sabotage, arson and other disruption that European authorities linked to Russia during the war. Putin said in May that Russia was not conducting a sabotage campaign in Europe.
Poland had previously arrested a man in 2024 in an alleged plan to kill Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Elsewhere, authorities have cited cases involving targets in France, Lithuania and Germany. Historical accusations also include the 2006 killing of Alexander Litvinenko in London, the 2018 poisoning attempt against Sergei Skripal in Salisbury and the 2019 killing of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Berlin.
Those earlier episodes form context but do not by themselves prove the current allegation. For the Warsaw case, the confirmed public record in the supplied evidence was limited to the arrest, Polish officials’ statements and acknowledged US cooperation. The intended victim remained unnamed, the suspect’s case was unresolved, and Moscow’s response was not available.
The absence of operational detail also prevents assessment of how advanced the alleged preparation was. Tusk said intervention came before the intended killing, while the arrest date establishes that the suspect had already been detained for six days when the prime minister spoke publicly.
