Poland Hands Over Russian Agent to Ukraine

Poland has handed over to Ukraine its citizen suspected of working for Russia, PAP reports, citing a statement by Polish Interior Minister Tomasz Siemoniak.

The day before, the Security Service of Ukraine announced that Poland had transfered a Russian agent from the entourage of pro-Russian figure in Ukraine Viktor Medvedchuk, who is hiding in Russia.

According to the Ukrainian media, it is a ‘political expert’ and propagandist Kirill Molchanov.

Commenting on the situation, Tomasz Semoniak noted that ‘this is a normal procedure and cooperation between legal states’.

‘Suspects in the commission of crimes, whom we are looking for, are deported to Poland... And if we have a Ukrainian citizen whom Ukraine wants, we deport him there. This is normal cooperation between rule-of-law states... It's routine,’ he said.

Molchanov left Ukraine in 2022 and moved to Russia, where he became one of the key ideologues of the Kremlin's media projects and a frequent guest on Russian television propaganda programmes.

Also the day before, it became known that the Internal Security Agency (ABW) detained a 47-year-old Ukrainian citizen in Poland on suspicion of collaborating with Russian special services.

As The Gaze reported, in 2024, a Polish court convicted 21-year-old Russian hockey player Maxim S of espionage. He had been detained the previous year as part of an operation to expose a large-scale Russian spy network. Maxim S was sentenced to 3 years in prison.