Poland arrests Belarusian ‘agent’ in tit-for-tat move as border tensions rise

WARSAW

Poland’s security services arrested a “Belarusian agent,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Tuesday, in retaliation for Minsk’s arrest last week of a Polish monk.

Poland’s Foreign Ministry also revoked the diplomatic accreditation of a Belarusian envoy and announced the closure of Poland’s border with Belarus later this week.

“The arrest is the result of cooperation with services including Romania and the Czech Republic. A Belarusian diplomat supporting the aggressive actions of Belarusian services against our state will also be expelled from Poland,” Tusk wrote on the US social media company X’s platform.

Prosecutors charged the man with espionage in Poland and Hungary and requested that he be detained for three months.

Tusk said Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) had detained the person Monday, following “a long-term operation carried out by the ABW and Czech (BIS), Hungarian (AH), Romanian (SRI) and Moldovan (SIS) services.”

Poland will also close its border with Belarus from Friday due to the upcoming Zapad-2025 war games being undertaken by Russia and Belarus near the Polish border, Tusk also announced on Tuesday.

A "target” of the drills is the Suwałki Gap, an 100-kilometer (62-mile) strip of land near the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

Tusk added that Polish and allied forces will hold their own exercises on the Polish side of the border. Zapad-2025 takes place from Sept. 12-16.

Poland has accused Belarus of conducing a hybrid war, including forcing migrants over the border into Poland, since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Tusk last Friday called Belarus’s arrest of a Polish monk on espionage charges “absurd.” Belarusian state television reported that a 27-year-old Polish citizen, a monk named Grzegorz Gaweł, had been detained and accused of spying for the Polish intelligence services.

During visits to Vilnius on Monday and Helsinki on Tuesday, Polish President Karol Nawrocki sought to shore up Baltic region responses to a potential Russian attack.

Meanwhile, Poland will receive €43.7 billion ($51 billion) in cheap loans from the European Union’s €150 billion defense investment program, making it by far the largest recipient.