Man Accused of Plotting Attack on Poland PM Tusk Is Detained

A man who was allegedly plotting an assassination attempt on Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has been detained.

The arrest, announced in X posts by Tusk and Poland’s interior minister, Marcin Kierwiński, came hours after authorities said they were investigating a plot against Tusk and Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz after receiving credible intelligence in the form of an emailed tip.

Kierwiński told the Polish broadcaster TVP on Sunday evening that the man in custody was from Lower Silesia and in his 60s. He added that the suspect had been in contact with extremist groups, but didn’t say what sort of politics those groups espoused. He added that it was too soon to say if there was a foreign angle to the case, but that the suspect more likely was active in domestic radical circles.

Jacek Dobrzyński, press spokesman for Poland’s Special Services ministry, told TVN24 that the suspect had been arrested in the nation’s southwest. His name hasn’t been released.

The tip is believed to have come from a person with knowledge of an effort to recruit, via social media, members of a radical organization with anti-government views to carry out a shooting, Polish media reported.

“Month after month, year by year, more and more threats and intimidation are being made to the police, the State Protection Service, and the services, concerning Poland and Poles,” Dobrzyński told reporters. “Now we’re talking about threats directed at the most important figures in the country.”

Officials spoke in Warsaw after an emergency meeting of Poland’s police force, State Protection Service and Internal Security Agency on Sunday morning.

Read more: Russia’s Attacks on Europe Get More Brazen and More Dangerous

While security officials didn’t link the suspected plot to Russia and its years-long war in Ukraine, Poland has been a key focus of so-called hybrid attacks on Europe by Moscow that have increased in recent months.

As a major conduit for aid to Ukraine, Poland has suffered a spate of suspicious incidents, with multiple cyberattacks on public utilities like water, energy infrastructure and hospitals, and damage to the rail line between Warsaw and the Ukrainian border attributed to Russian intelligence.

Read More: NATO Commander Says Ukraine Aid Will Deter Putin’s Europe Threat ·

Separately, Western intelligence agencies have warned executives at European defense companies that Russia is stepping up efforts to assassinate them, the Financial Times reported on Sunday, citing people in the intelligence community weren’t identified.

Russia also warned in late September that it sees defense manufacturers in European countries that help supply arms to Ukraine as “potential military targets.”