A Russian ice hockey player suspected of spying for Russia has been arrested in Poland, where he was playing at the national championship, the government announced on Friday, sparking “strong protest” from Moscow.
“The arrested man is a professional athlete from a premier league ice hockey club,” the government added in a statement, without giving his name. Since 2021 he lived in Poland.
“On the territory of Poland, he carried out foreign intelligence tasks, in particular the identification of sensitive infrastructure in several voivodeships (administrative districts, editor’s note)”, the government press release says.
The Russian national was arrested on June 11 in the Silesian Voivodeship in southern Poland, the same source said, without giving details of the hockey team the man played for.
According to prosecutors, this is the 14th person arrested as part of an investigation into a “spy network collaborating with the Russian secret services”.
Moscow expressed its “strong protest” against these arrests. “We demand that Russia be informed immediately and comprehensively,” said Russian foreign policy spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
The Russian embassy in Poland said it had “sent a notice to the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs asking it (…) to inform it of the allegations made against the arrested ice hockey player.”
“So far, the Russian embassies and consulates in Poland have not received any official information from the relevant Polish authorities on this issue,” she complained.
According to a statement by the Polish prosecutor’s office, the 14 arrested Russians were “carrying out intelligence and propaganda activities against Poland”.
The Polish government assured that one of the groups’ tasks was to “monitor the railway lines” and spread “propaganda against NATO, Poland and the policies of the Polish government”.
Asked about the issue on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov regretted “the very, very difficult work” of the Russian diplomatic mission in Warsaw, “due to the Russophobic attitude” of the Polish authorities.