WARSAW, Poland (AP) 鈥� Polish authorities have arrested a man suspected of a Russian activist critical of President Vladimir Putin 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 Ukrainian war refugees.
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 Belarus. 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.
Tomasz Siemoniak, Poland鈥檚 security services minister, said Russia was under suspicion due to the profile of the victim and the way he was killed.
鈥淚f, in recent years, murders have been carried out in various countries 鈥� for example, in Germany a few years ago 鈥� on the orders of Russian security services, then we must seriously consider the possibility that when someone who is an open critic of Putin and Kadyrov is killed in this manner, this is a likely hypothesis,鈥� Siemoniak told the same news conference.
But he stressed that evidence and testimony were being collected and that the prosecutor鈥檚 office and the police were not ruling out other motives.
Poland’s said Wednesday that the killing has the , and that if it had been ordered by Russia it 鈥渨ould constitute state terrorism.鈥�
Polish investigators initially detained two Belarusian citizens but released them later, saying they had no evidence that they were directly involved in the killing.
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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