Prosecutors in Poland have charged an 18-year-old Ukrainian man with carrying out sabotage acts on behalf of Russian intelligence, aimed at inciting tensions between Poland and Ukraine.
The suspect, identified under Polish privacy laws as Illia K, was charged with 47 criminal acts committed between November 2024 and August 2025, when he was arrested. The alleged sabotage included desecrating memorials to Polish victims of the UPA, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army that took part in the killing of tens of thousands of Poles during World War Two in what is known as the Volhynia massacre.
“Aim Was to Incite Ethnic Tensions”
“The aim was to incite ethnic tensions between Poland and Ukraine,” Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) said in a statement. Prosecutors said that although the suspect himself acted for financial rather than ideological reasons, most of the alleged acts were carried out for the benefit of foreign intelligence.
The ABW said in May that it had launched 48 espionage investigations last year, more than double the number recorded in 2024. The agency said Russia’s secret services had focused on discrediting Poland internationally and exploiting historical ethnic tensions, primarily in Polish-Ukrainian relations.
Drone Plot Targeting the President
The 18-year-old was also charged with making preparations to fly a drone over Polish President Karol Nawrocki’s vehicle during last year’s Polish Armed Forces’ Day parade in Warsaw on August 15. He was arrested three days before the event took place.
The suspect, who faces life in prison if convicted, allegedly recruited others to take part in the crimes, paying them using cryptocurrencies registered in Russia and China, according to the ABW. Prosecutors said Illia K received tasks from an unidentified person via a messaging service and sent back photos proving he had carried them out.
He allegedly vandalised the Monument to the Jewish Heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto in the Polish capital, as well as monuments to Polish victims of the Volhynia massacre in Domostawa and Wrocław, placing inscriptions and symbols glorifying the UPA.
A Wound That Still Divides Poland and Ukraine
Up to 100,000 members of the Polish minority in what was then Poland, and is now western Ukraine, were killed during the Volhynia massacre between 1943 and 1945, as the UPA fought to establish an independent Ukraine. The issue has strained relations between the two neighbours ever since. Kyiv has at times blocked Polish requests to exhume victims’ remains from mass graves, though exhumations have since resumed.
The massacre resurfaced as a flashpoint in May, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a decree naming a Ukrainian military unit after the “Heroes of the UPA.” In response, Nawrocki stripped the Ukrainian leader of Poland’s highest state honour, the Order of the White Eagle, a step that had happened only once before in 300 years.
Poles and Ukrainians view the UPA very differently, said Wojciech Konończuk, director of Warsaw’s Office for Eastern Studies.
