By AFP | 2023-12-20

LUBLIN, Poland -- A Polish court Tuesday (December 19) convicted 14 citizens of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine of belonging to a spy ring preparing acts of sabotage on behalf of Moscow.

The defendants were charged last month for offenses including seeking to derail trains carrying aid to neighboring Ukraine, and monitoring critical infrastructure and military facilities in the NATO member.

They received jail terms ranging from 13 months to six years.

"The court found all the defendants guilty of the crimes charged, and found some of them to be operating within an organised criminal group," judge Jaroslaw Kowalski said as delivered the verdict.

The 14 defendants were convicted in absentia after they all pleaded guilty and skipped the trial.

Two other alleged members of the spy ring will be tried separately after they withdrew their initial guilty pleas.

Among those convicted is a Russian player for a Polish hockey club, who was sentenced to 2 years, 11 months. His arrest in June prompted a "strong protest" from Moscow and a demand for a "comprehensive explanation."

Russian state media identified him as Maxim Sergeyev, who played for Zaglebie Sosnowiec in the southwestern Polish city of Sosnowiec.

The ring also included two Ukrainian lawyers, a political scientist, a French language teacher, a pharmacy technician and a software engineer, the Rzeczpospolita daily reported.

Paid in cryptocurrency

The members of the ring received their orders via the Telegram messaging app and were paid in cryptocurrency, said investigators.

They received between $300 and about $10,000, Polish media reported.

Prosecutor Piotr Lopatynski highlighted the role played by Telegram and cryptocurrency.

"We're looking at a new, perhaps hitherto unknown way of running or organising a spy network in Poland," he told reporters.

Most of the members of the spy ring were detained in March.

Poland's then defense minister Mariusz Blaszczak said at the time that "the threat was real."

Surveilling rail routes and border crossings

The first arrests came after hidden cameras were found on important railway routes and junctions, recording and transmitting data on traffic, said local media.

Among the facilities the convicted spies surveilled were border checkpoints with Ukraine and the major rail routes used to transfer weapons and humanitarian aid to the neighboring country.

Their tasks also included distributing propaganda handouts to incite hatred of Ukraine.

Relations between Warsaw and Moscow have been historically hostile but reached new lows since Poland emerged as one of the most ardent supporters of Ukraine after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.

The European Union member has been one of the major donors of military equipment to Ukraine and is a transport hub for arms coming from its Western allies.