'Disposable spies': Poland records unprecedented number of Russian espionage cases

Advertising 'Disposable spies': Poland records unprecedented number of Russian espionage cases Investigation Europe

Warsaw has recorded an unprecedented number of hybrid attacks on its territory since 2024, Poland’s internal security service (ABW) said in a report published this week. Amateur spies once used by Russian intelligence services have laid the groundwork for more complex operations, according to a researcher following the emergence of these “single-use agents”.    

Issued on: 09/05/2026 - 13:56Modified: 09/05/2026 - 15:03

3 min Reading time Share By: Sonya CIESNIK

Last year and the year before saw a rise in espionage activity in Poland, “primarily on the part of Russian and closely allied Belarusian special services as well as China”, the Internal Security Agency (ABW) said in a report published on May 6. 

As a result, Poland conducted as many counter-intelligence investigations in 2024 and 2025 as it had in the previous three decades.  

European law enforcement and intelligence officials began noticing these efforts back in 2022, The New Yorker reported in February. Job offers began appearing in online chat groups, usually on Telegram, directed at Russian-speaking populations – Russians, but also Belarusians and Ukrainians.

Polish intelligence services came up with a name for these isolated agents recruited by Russian intelligence – jednorazowi agenci – or “single-use agents”.

The ABW report said Russian intelligence services were gradually shifting from single-use agents to more “professional” networks to carry out sabotage and other campaigns across Europe.

“’Disposable spies’ are very useful for generating chaos, radicalising public opinion, strengthening intergroup antagonisms, distracting attention and testing the resilience of the state apparatus,” said Arkadiusz Nyzio, a Polish researcher and author of a report on Russia’s use of middlemen to create chaos in Europe.

They have also laid out the groundwork for more complex operations on the continent, Nyzio stated.  

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Russia has been using such middlemen to create both social unrest and physically destroy targets in Europe. “It’s very cheap, offers a veneer of deniability, and the spread can be huge,” said a Polish official interviewed by The New Yorker.

Russian sabotage efforts have targeted not only Polish military facilities and vital infrastructure but also soft targets like shopping malls and other public venues.

In one of the more dramatic incidents, a fire on May 12, 2024, destroyed one of Warsaw’s largest shopping centres, Marywilska 44. Nearly 1,200 boutiques went up in flames, leaving behind a charred landscape although no one was killed. Nearly two years later, the remains of the shopping centre have been razed.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in a post on X that Poland knows "for sure" that an arson attack ordered by Russian special services was behind the blaze.

Increasing complexity

From 2024 to 2025, Russia began shifting towards creating complex “sabotage cells” that relied more on “closed structures” like those found in organised crime, the ABW wrote. “Russians prefer individuals with experience in law enforcement,” the report said, citing in particular former soldiers, police officers or mercenaries from paramilitary organisations like the Wagner Group.

But the use of single-use spies will not disappear, Nyzio says. From the start, he says, these campaigns have been about “intelligence operations at different levels: employing various methods and tools to achieve various outcomes”.

“We should think of these as complementary cogs in a machine, not as replacements. Disposable spies have arguably helped map out the situation in Europe. The speed and way they were neutralised, as well as the public’s reaction, provided valuable insights into the resilience of the state and society.”  

Different actors and various methods are used for separate tasks. “While disposable spies spread anti-Ukrainian propaganda” – like putting up posters with anti-Ukrainian or anti-NATO messages – “the ‘professionals’ sabotage railway infrastructure and intelligence officers, operating under particularly deep cover, infiltrate state institutions”, Nyzio says.

Last November, an explosion damaged a major Polish railway line in what Prime Minister Tusk called an “unprecedented act of sabotage”. The incident could have caused mass casualties if a train driver hadn’t noticed an issue with the track and warned others in time.

The fear and paranoia such sabotage can spread is the objective.

“If you say every day, ‘Russia is attacking us,’ then they don’t really have to attack us anymore,” a European intelligence official told The New Yorker.

Russia, working with its close ally Belarus, hopes to influence Poland’s upcoming parliamentary elections in Poland, according to Nyzio. “There is a strong possibility that next year’s elections will result in the formation of a far-right government, featuring prominent anti-Ukrainian and anti-European politicians who propagate every conceivable conspiracy theory. The establishment of such a government would signify a geopolitical realignment of Poland, including the abandonment or significant weakening of Poland’s support for the Ukrainian cause. This represents a dream scenario for Russia.”

In the long term, Russia’s objective remains the same as always: to destabilise Poland and create divisions between Western allies, Nyzio says.

“The weaker, more internally conflicted and more at odds with the West Poland is, the better.”

(With AP) 

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