Poland has arrested two Ukrainian men suspected of espionage and sabotage on behalf of Russian intelligence services, the Internal Security Agency (ABW) said on Tuesday, November 10, 2026.

Source: Reuters via SRN News

The two men, aged 24 and 25, were detained in Mińsk Mazowiecki, east of Warsaw, according to Tomasz Siemoniak, Poland's minister coordinating the special services, who disclosed the case on Tuesday. A court has ordered them held for three months, and the Łódź branch of the National Prosecutor's Office is supervising the investigation.

What the ABW alleges

"According to findings by the ABW, the suspects carried out tasks on behalf of Russian special services, which included, among other things, reconnoitring critical infrastructure and military facilities throughout the country," the agency said in a statement quoted by Reuters. Prosecutors have charged both men with espionage on behalf of a foreign intelligence service against Poland and with committing acts of sabotage. These are charges, not a verdict, and the case has not been tested in court.

Source: Reuters via DevDiscourse

According to investigators, the sabotage took a deliberately misleading form: the men allegedly set fire to vehicles after replacing their licence plates with ones resembling those used by the Ukrainian military. "The investigation has established that the acts of sabotage were carried out at the behest of Russian intelligence services and were intended to fuel anti-Ukrainian sentiment," prosecutors said in a separate statement. The men were allegedly paid for the tasks, including in cryptocurrencies.

Part of a wider hybrid-warfare dispute

Poland has long accused Russia and its ally Belarus of waging a hybrid campaign of sabotage, cyberattacks and disinformation since Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — accusations Russia has consistently denied. Poland is one of Ukraine's closest allies and a key logistics corridor for Western military aid, which Polish officials say makes its railways, depots and infrastructure repeated targets for reconnaissance.

What happens next: the two men remain in custody while prosecutors build the case under the Łódź office's supervision. Any trial will test whether investigators can evidence the alleged Russian link — handlers, payments and tasking — rather than the arson and reconnaissance alone. Warsaw is expected to brief NATO and EU partners, as previous alleged sabotage cases in Poland have fed wider European moves to tighten security around critical infrastructure.