In recent years – and with increasing frequency in recent months – Russia has been either suspected or accused of numerous actions that violate the territorial integrity and threaten the security of NATO member nations. These include airspace violations, drone incursions, sabotaging undersea communications and data cables, and – most recently – landing a drone with a high-yield explosive warhead at a NATO heavy airlift terminal at Halle Airport in the East German city of Leipzig.
Moscow has now added a new act of aggression to its list of dirty tricks. It is implicated in a plot to assassinate an American citizen on NATO territory.
Putin Thinking Back in 2016 Russian Federation Photo
Putin Back in 2016 Image Credit Russian Federation
On Thursday, 13 August, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced that the National Counterintelligence and Internal Security Service (Agencja Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego or ABW) and law enforcement personnel arrested a Russian national on charges of plotting to kill a dual Ukrainian American citizen living in Warsaw.
“Thanks to the truly brilliant action of our services…we detained a Russian citizen recruited by Russian intelligence services,” said Tusk. The Russian national was identified through cooperation with and based on information provided to Poland by US intelligence. “At the last moment, thanks to an operation by the ABW and police, we managed to prevent this execution, this assassination,” stated Tusk.
PM Donald Tusk said this was “the first such situation in which someone acting on Russian orders decided to carry out an attack on a US citizen living in another NATO country.” Russia’s attempted liquidation of this US dual-national is consistent with the warnings issued by US and other Western intelligence officials. They have stated that Russia has been engaged in an escalating program of targeted assassinations ever since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
NATO intelligence services have reported that in past years they have foiled several assassination attempts in different European nations. But specific aspects of this case are the basis for Poland’s PM Tusk calling the incident unprecedented.
Assassin’s Target Accused of Supplying Kyiv With Military Hardware
The Russian national accused of being on an assassination mission was described as a 29-year-old Russian national with roots linking him to the Donetsk Oblast in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. Donetsk and the neighboring oblast of Luhansk were initially invaded in April 2014 by “pro-Russian separatists” and with the support of Moscow’s armed forces. These occupied territories in Donbas were then used as a springboard for part of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The suspect in custody, who was allegedly recruited by Russia’s secret services, was detained by Polish authorities on 7 August. Pending a full investigation, he will be held in custody for three months, according to a statement from Warsaw police. If convicted, he could face up to 15 years in prison.
The motivation for arranging the killing of this American Ukrainian citizen, according to Tusk’s statement at Thursday’s news conference, was that he and his activities were “uncomfortable for the Putin regime”. The PM did not provide any other details.
The Polish broadcaster RMF24 Media reported Friday, the day after Tusk’s announcement, that the target of the would-be Russian assassin was a Ukrainian-American rapper and video blogger named Albert Vasyliev. He is widely known by his stage name “Kyivstoner” and has also performed under the pseudonym Slevin Dadyan.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has accused Vasilyev of managing logistics for the smuggling of drones from Slovakia through Poland and Belarus to aid Ukrainian attacks on Russian strategic targets. He has denied these claims, which seem fanciful at best, given Belarus’s close alliance with Russia.
The Killings Will Continue
Poland and other NATO members also expect Russia to continue what has become a series of plots aimed at killing senior arms-industry officials whose companies have been supplying Ukraine. CNN reported in 2024 that US and German services managed to prevent the assassination of the Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger.
Tusk warned that his intelligence services believe Moscow will continue the targeting of any and all individuals that it considers a threat to the Kremlin’s rule.
“Unfortunately, we must assume that Putin’s regime will seek to eliminate people it considers undesirable for various reasons, in different places around the world,” Tusk said. He added that Poland and other NATO countries need to be prepared to counter these actions.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
