WARSAW, Poland (AP) 鈥� Polish authorities have arrested a man suspected of a Russian activist critical of and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, and are investigating whether Russia is behind it, senior officials said Thursday.
The killing is the latest act which Polish authorities believe could be part of a campaign of Russian sabotage aimed at sowing fear and demoralizing Ukraine’s closest allies. Poland, a NATO and European Union member, has in recent years become a place of refuge for political dissidents from Russia and Belarus, as well as .
鈥淓arly this morning, police apprehended a suspect in the murder of a Russian man 鈥� a murder that shocked all of Poland,鈥� Interior Minister Marcin Kierwi艅ski told a news conference in Warsaw.
He said the suspect is a 36-year-old man who carried a passport belonging to the ex-Soviet republic of Georgia with links to organized crime and crimes committed in Poland dating to 2022. The arrest took place in a hostel housing foreigners in Piast贸w, near Warsaw, he said.
Robert Kuzovkov, a 44-year-old known by the pseudonym Semyon Skrepetsky, was killed on Monday morning near his home in the eastern Polish city of Biala Podlaska, near the border with . Prosecutors said the perpetrator fired two shots at him, then shot him three more times at close range before fleeing.
Kuzovkov, who died of gunshot wounds to the head, chest and back, had painted unflattering caricatures of Putin, Kadyrov and other high-ranking Russian officials. One depicts Putin being cradled in the arms of the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. He had refused offers of protection by Polish authorities.
Polish officials said Russia was under suspicion due to the profile of the victim and the way he was killed, though they stressed that they are still investigating.
鈥淲e are treating this case very, very seriously because, frankly, there is reason to suspect that there may have been people who commissioned this potential assassin,鈥� said in Brussels, where he arrived for a summit on Thursday.
鈥淚 do not need to convince anyone that this concern involves the possibility of state-sponsored terrorism. This would not be the first such case in Europe, as Europe has seen incidents of this kind before. However, in Poland it would be the first case of a politically motivated assassination carried out on behalf of a foreign state.鈥�
Russia has been accused of trying to , including targeting exiled activists in France and Lithuania.
Officials in Germany have also broken up plots targeting the head of a to Ukraine and .
Polish authorities arrested a man in 2024 in what they said was . That same year, a Russian helicopter pilot who defected with Russian operatives as the prime suspects.
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