Ukrainian teen charged in Poland over Russian-linked sabotage that targeted WWII memorials

An 18-year-old Ukrainian man has been charged with 47 acts of sabotage on behalf of Russian intelligence, including desecrating Holocaust and wartime massacre memorials and plotting to fly a drone over the Polish president’s car. The suspect, identified under Polish privacy laws as Illia K, was arrested in August 2025, three days before he was due to launch a drone attack on President Karol Nawrocki’s vehicle during the Polish Armed Forces’ Day parade in Warsaw on 15 August. Prosecutors say the teenager, acting for financial rather than ideological reasons, carried out the alleged crimes between November 2024 and his arrest. Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) said in a statement: “The aim was to incite ethnic tensions between Poland and Ukraine.” Jacek Dobrzyński, spokesperson for Poland’s minister for special services, wrote on X: “The young Ukrainian, acting on behalf of Russian services, placed inscriptions on buildings and memorial sites glorifying the UPA [Ukrainian Insurgent Army] and [Stepan] Bandera. In doing so he desecrated places of particular importance to Poles … including the Monument to the Heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Volhynia Massacre Memorial.” The UPA killed tens of thousands of Poles during World War II in what is now western Ukraine. The atrocities, known as the Volhynia massacre, have long strained relations between the two countries. Tensions flared again in May after Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky named a military unit “Heroes of the UPA”. According to the ABW, Illia K used cryptocurrencies registered in Russia and China to pay recruits he brought into the operation. He received orders from an unidentified person via a messaging service and sent photographs to prove he had carried them out. If convicted, he faces life in prison. The ABW said in May that it had launched 48 espionage investigations last year, more than double the number in 2024, with Russian services focusing on exploiting “historical ethnic antagonisms, mainly in Polish-Ukrainian relations”.