Allied Intelligence — 2026-07-03

Poland Charges Two Men With Spying for Belarus in Hybrid Warfare Campaign

BLUFBelarus's shift to Telegram-and-cryptocurrency recruitment of untrained locals for infrastructure reconnaissance gives Minsk a scalable, deniable collection model that Poland's doubling caseload confirms is outpacing counterintelligence capacity.

Poland's Internal Security Agency detained a 19-year-old Belarusian, Aliaksei B., and a 44-year-old Pole, Rafał G., in Warsaw on June 25, and a Lublin regional prosecutor charged both on July 2 with acting on behalf of a foreign intelligence service under Article 130 123. Prosecutors and the ABW allege the pair, active from March 2024 to February 2025, photographed and recorded participants at Belarusian-minority events in Warsaw and sent the material to Belarus, where Lukashenko-regime security services and propaganda used it 13. The two also recruited people through Telegram, paid in cryptocurrency, to photograph critical infrastructure sites 12. A court ordered Aliaksei B. held in pretrial detention for three months, while Rafał G. was placed under police supervision with his passport confiscated 13. The case is part of a wider ABW investigation that saw five other suspects, three Belarusians and two Ukrainians, detained in November 2025, of whom three remain in pretrial detention, one minor was placed in a youth shelter, and one has died; authorities say further arrests are possible 13.

Analysis
Poland's charges reveal a Belarusian intelligence model recruiting locally through Telegram and cryptocurrency rather than trained agents from Minsk, a method ABW says now drives twice as many espionage investigations opened in 2025 as in 2024. That platform-based recruitment of non-professional operatives mirrors Iran's approach with Sobirgon in Israel, suggesting two unrelated adversaries independently converged on the same tradecraft. The aperture has widened beyond monitoring Belarusian exiles to mapping critical infrastructure, and the Rzeszów ABW unit's still-open investigation, which has already yielded five prior arrests, points to an expanding prosecutorial pipeline rather than a closed case. Sourcing rests almost entirely on the ABW's own statement, with other outlets amplifying rather than independently corroborating it, and the timing days before a Minsk-protested Warsaw exile march suggests the rhetoric may be as much domestic political signaling as case management.

5 sources

Poland charges two men with spying for Belarus - Notes from Poland
Belarusian and Polish Citizens Arrested and Charged with Espionage in Poland - Militarnyi
Polish ABW detained two men accused of spying for Belarus - Mezha
Two detained in Poland over espionage for Belarus - TVP World
ABW zatrzymała kolejne osoby działające na rzecz obcego wywiadu - Agencja Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego (ABW / Polish Internal Security Agency)