Jo Harper
22 July 2026•Update: 22 July 2026
Polish prosecutors on Wednesday charged an 18-year-old Ukrainian with carrying out sabotage and diversionary activities on behalf of Russian intelligence, accusing him of attempting to inflame ethnic tensions between Poles and Ukrainians while also preparing a drone operation targeting a military parade attended by the Polish president.
The indictment, filed on July 14 following an investigation by Poland's Internal Security Agency (ABW) and the National Prosecutor's Office, alleges that the suspect, identified under Polish privacy laws as Illia K., committed 47 criminal offenses between November 2024 and August 2025.
According to investigators, the teenager vandalized memorials and public buildings with graffiti glorifying the hot-button Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and its wartime leader Stepan Bandera, including monuments commemorating Polish victims of the World War II-era Volhynia massacres and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Authorities also allege that the suspect prepared an act of sabotage involving a drone that was intended to fly over the vehicle carrying Poland's president during an Armed Forces Day military parade in Warsaw last August. He was arrested before the alleged plan could be carried out.
Meant to 'incite conflict' between Poland, Ukraine: Security agency
ABW said the investigation uncovered an online recruitment network allegedly operated by Russian intelligence services, with operatives recruited through encrypted messaging platforms and paid in cryptocurrency via exchanges registered in Russia and China.
Polish officials said the case illustrates Moscow's continuing efforts to exploit historical grievances between Poland and Ukraine to undermine support for Kyiv as the Russia-Ukraine war continues, now into its fifth year.
"This is another example of the activity of Russian special services directed against Poland's interests," the ABW said on the US social media platform X, adding that the operation was intended to "incite conflicts between the Polish and Ukrainian nations."
The case comes at a particularly sensitive moment in relations between Warsaw and Kyiv.
Poland has been one of Ukraine's strongest political, military, and humanitarian supporters since the beginning of the war in 2022, hosting millions of refugees and serving as a key logistics hub for Western military assistance. However, bilateral ties have deteriorated over the past year as historical disputes have resurfaced alongside growing domestic political tensions.
The sharpest recent dispute followed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's decision to name a military unit after the UPA, a nationalist force celebrated by many Ukrainians for fighting for independence but held responsible in Poland for the massacre of an estimated 100,000 Polish civilians in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia during World War II.
Polish security services have also warned repeatedly that Russia is attempting to exploit these historical disputes through hybrid operations designed to weaken Polish support for Ukraine.
