Polish authorities are tightening security around "the main transit hub for foreign military aid to Ukraine," as a series of arrests announced this week expose growing concerns about Russian-backed sabotage operations, Bloomberg reports, UNN writes.
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The Minister of Internal Affairs Tomasz Siemoniak confirmed that measures are being taken to strengthen security around Rzeszow-Jasienka Airport.
"We are facing a foreign state that is conducting hostile and, in military terms, kinetic actions on the territory of Poland," Semoniak said in an interview in Warsaw, without specifying security measures at the airport.
"There was nothing like this before," he said.
The minister said that Poland is facing an unprecedented level of foreign interference after Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced that as many as 12 people had been detained in a crackdown on alleged sabotage from Russia. These include arson, attempted arson, and physical attacks.
The role of Rzeszów-Jasienka Airport in the Kremlin-backed operation became known in April. Prosecutors said they had detained a man suspected of facilitating a plot to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The man was allegedly ready to collect information about airport security as part of the plan.
In March last year, sixteen foreign nationals were detained on suspicion of involvement in a network of surveillance of supplies to Ukraine in the southeastern Podkarpackie region, which includes the regional center of Rzeszow. Polish agents seized cameras, electronic devices and GPS transmitters.
In a Polish investigation, authorities are looking into the Kremlin's role in a fire that burned down a shopping center in Warsaw earlier this month. Another case involves an alleged attempt to set fire to a paint factory in the western city of Wroclaw.
Semonyak said the recent actions were ordered by Russia's GRU military intelligence service, adding that similar methods are being used across Europe. They typically involve recruiting so-called "disposable agents" such as football hooligans or organized crime groups who are willing to carry out such actions for money, he said.
The minister called it "a very serious situation," as Russian services are now acting much more consciously on foreign territory.
"We are no longer talking about agents of influence or some online activity," Semenyak said. - "These are people who are ready to come and set fire to things.