Key takeaways
- Poland says it detained six people over alleged ammunition-component exports to Russia; four face charges of acting for Russian intelligence.
- Prosecutors estimate the goods exceed 2 million złoty; the group allegedly operated from June 2023 to December 2025 via Kaliningrad.
- Four suspects are in pre-trial detention, but no trial has begun; the Russian-intelligence link remains an allegation.
Polish authorities announced on Thursday 5 November that they have detained six people suspected of working for Russian intelligence and illegally supplying military-use components to Russia. The announcement came from Tomasz Siemoniak, Poland's minister-coordinator of the special services, the Internal Security Agency (ABW) and the National Prosecutor's Office. Siemoniak said the suspects are five Polish citizens aged 25 to 52 and one Russian woman aged 37. No names have been published.
According to prosecutors, four of the six, including the Russian woman, are charged with acting for Russian intelligence against Poland. The ABW said the four were placed in pre-trial detention for three months. The other two are under non-custodial preventive measures. Prosecutors' preliminary estimate puts the value of the ammunition components bought and exported at more than 2 million złoty, about €455,000 according to Euronews and Der Spiegel. All of this is allegation. No court has established guilt.
What investigators say the group did
Siemoniak said ABW officers searched 21 locations in the Warmian-Masurian, Pomeranian and Greater Poland voivodeships (provinces) in an operation running from 21 October to 2 November. The ABW's Olsztyn branch leads the investigation. A prosecutor in Białystok supervises it.
Przemysław Nowak, spokesman for the National Prosecutor's Office, said all six are charged with taking part in an organised criminal group. Its aim, he said, was to export weapons elements, namely cartridge cases and projectiles, from Poland to Russia without the required authorisation. For the four also charged with working for Russian intelligence, Nowak described the aim as financial gain, by taking the shells and projectiles to Russia and thereby strengthening its military potential.
Nowak said the group was active in Poland, Lithuania and Russia from at least June 2023 to December 2025. Members ordered goods, partly through online shops, arranged collection and moved them to Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast in vehicles with hidden compartments. They crossed the border many times, he said. Polish border services stopped some shipments. The ABW said the components were "employed in particular in the production of ammunition and weapons systems".
Siemoniak told reporters: "Russia is subject to a strict embargo in this area, and this operation was designed to circumvent it." In remarks to the Polish news agency PAP, translated from Polish, he said Russian services increasingly work with criminal groups and with people ready to act for money. He said nearly 100 people have been named as suspects in ABW espionage and sabotage investigations since 1 January 2024.
Observers are reading: how the Polish case compares with the Lübeck and Brașov files on evidence, and what separates a smuggling case from a counter-intelligence one.
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A tense border and unanswered questions
The arrests came as Warsaw reported tension on the same frontier. On Tuesday 3 November, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Poland had foiled a possible provocation overnight at the Kaliningrad border. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US research group, reported that Polish border guards saw individuals carrying flashlights near Sepopol on the night of 2 to 3 November. No source links that incident to the ABW case. ISW also noted that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on 3 November that Poland and the Baltic states are the "most active promoters" of Europe's "reactionary and aggressive" policies towards Russia. ISW assesses this as an attempt to cast Poland as the aggressor. Crisis.Zone examined Warsaw's hardening posture along its logistics corridor in its September report on Russian pressure on NATO supply routes.
The Russian Embassy had not responded to DW's request for comment. DW noted that the Kremlin has consistently denied conducting sabotage operations in NATO countries.
Several questions remain open. The scheme is dated to December 2025, yet the searches ran from October 2026, and the sources do not explain the gap. No source says how much of the goods reached Russia and how much was intercepted, or what the Russian woman's role was. The ABW says it is still establishing the full extent of the group's activities.
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