Poland's internal security service has warned that Russia is shifting from using low-cost, one-time recruits to professional networks to carry out sabotage and other attacks across Europe. In a report published on Wednesday, the Internal Security Agency (ABW) said Russia is increasingly tapping into organised crime networks and recruiting individuals with law enforcement or military experience, such as former soldiers, police officers, or mercenaries from the Wagner Group.
The ABW report noted that in 2024-2025, Russia placed greater emphasis on creating 'complex sabotage cells' relying on closed structures of organised crime, moving away from the model of ad hoc internet recruits that expanded after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The agency also said Russian services had intensified training on Russian territory to professionally prepare agents for terrorist activities.
Poland has conducted as many espionage investigations in the past two years as it did over the previous three decades, with 62 people arrested. In 2024 and 2025, 69 espionage investigations were initiated, the same total as between 1991 and 2023. The ABW described these efforts as part of Russia's 'undeclared war with the Western world', using methods typical of special forces.
The report stated that the long-term goal of the Russian Federation remains the disintegration of Euro-Atlantic structures and the destabilisation of specific countries. While Poland is primarily targeted, some activities are also dictated by Belarus' secret services and China. The ABW considers mass surveillance operations in Poland as setting the ground for acts of diversion, which it views as the most serious challenge it faces, accepting the possibility of fatalities.
In November 2025, Poland faced what Prime Minister Donald Tusk called an 'unprecedented act of sabotage', when explosions and malfunctions on a railway line used for deliveries to Ukraine affected two trains, including a passenger train, though there were no casualties.
