According to the Rzeczpospolita newspaper, in 2023, Polish security services said that they had liquidated a Russian spy network. A total of 16 people were detained (13 Ukrainian citizens, two citizens of Belarus and one Russian).
According to the investigation, the network members "were ordered by the Russians not only to collect information, take photos of military and civilian objects, stir up anti-Ukrainian and anti-NATO sentiments, but also to prepare sabotage.
A Polish court sentenced 14 of the detainees to up to six years in prison on espionage charges. All the defendants pleaded guilty.
In the courtroom, 20-year-old citizen of Belarus Maria M. and two other convicts were released. They received up to one and a half years in prison, as they had served most of their sentences in pre-trial detention.
Yaroslav B., 44, was sentenced to a year and a month in prison, but allegedly ignored orders to serve his sentence three times. Maria M., a 20-year-old Belarusian woman, applied for parole but failed to show up at the Warsaw court that was supposed to consider her application. Because of this, she must now also be arrested.
Artur M. Chernihivets was a minor at the time of the crime, so the court ordered him to study in a shelter, but he ignored this decision and did not show up there. The investigation believes that he purchased cameras and hired people who were to install the equipment.
As alleged by the Polish Internal Security Agency (ISA), a group of 17 people monitored the movement of goods on the railroads.
ABP officers found hidden cameras on railway routes and transportation hubs that recorded the movement of trains and transmitted the images to a server. These were mainly sections of railroad routes near the Jasionka airport, located in the vicinity of Rzeszów. This is the main transshipment point for Western arms and ammunition for Ukraine.
