Poland on Tuesday detained 16 suspects of spying on behalf of Russia in counterintelligence operations carried out in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a spokesman for Poland’s special services announced.
The operations made it possible to “identify and arrest agents of the Russian secret services, as well as to dismantle the modus operandi for such activities against Poland,” Stanislav Zharin told Polish media.
Zharin said Polish counterintelligence manages to “effectively discover how the Russians operate”.
“But unfortunately it is still too early to rest on our laurels. The Russians continue to look for ways to destabilize and weaken Poland,” he added.
The announcement comes at a time of great tensions on the border with Belarus, a country home to thousands of mercenaries belonging to Russia’s Wagner group.
The Polish Ministry of Defense on Tuesday announced the deployment of additional military units on the border with Belarus to strengthen security.
The Belarusian army also said it had conducted firing exercises in a region bordering Lithuania and Poland last Tuesday.
“A shooting training was conducted at the Gozhsky shooting range, simulating a tactical episode with ambushes,” the Belarusian defense ministry said on social media, quoted by the Spanish agency EFE.
The site is close to the Lithuanian border and the “Suwalki corridor”, a strategic strip of Polish territory just under 100 kilometers long between Belarus and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.
Poland and the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) are members of the European Union (EU) and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization).
Belarus, led by Alexander Lukashenko, supports Russia’s war against Ukraine, sparked on February 24, 2022 by the invasion of Moscow.
In addition to concerns about the Wagner Group, Poland has accused Belarus and Russia of using migrants and refugees to destabilize NATO’s eastern flank, calling it a form of “hybrid warfare”.
“It is an operation organized by Russian and Belarusian special services and it is getting more and more intense,” Polish Deputy Interior Minister Maciej Wasik said on Monday.
Source: DN
