Polish authorities have arrested a man suspected of fatally shooting Robert Kuzovkov, a Russian activist critical of President Vladimir Putin and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, and are investigating whether Russia is behind it, senior officials said Thursday. The killing is the latest act Polish authorities believe could be part of a campaign of Russian sabotage aimed at sowing fear and demoralizing Ukraine’s closest allies. In a country that has become a refuge for political dissidents from Russia and Belarus, as well as Ukrainian war refugees, the machinery of cross-border repression is now being read through the language of security and state suspicion.
Who Was Targeted
Robert Kuzovkov, 44, known by the pseudonym Semyon Skrepetsky, was killed on Monday morning near his home in the eastern Polish city of Biala Podlaska, near the border with Belarus. Prosecutors said the perpetrator fired two shots at him, then shot him three more times at close range before fleeing. Kuzovkov died of gunshot wounds to the head, chest and back. He had painted unflattering caricatures of Putin, Kadyrov and other high-ranking Russian officials. One depicted Putin being cradled in the arms of the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. He had refused offers of protection by Polish authorities.
Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński told a news conference in Warsaw, “Early this morning, police apprehended a suspect in the murder of a Russian man — a murder that shocked all of Poland.” He said the suspect is a 36-year-old man who carried a passport belonging to the ex-Soviet republic of Georgia with links to organized crime and crimes committed in Poland dating to 2022. The arrest took place in a hostel housing foreigners in Piastów, near Warsaw.
What the Authorities Say
Polish officials said Russia was under suspicion due to the profile of the victim and the way he was killed, though they stressed that they are still investigating. Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in Brussels, where he arrived for a summit on Thursday, “We are treating this case very, very seriously because, frankly, there is reason to suspect that there may have been people who commissioned this potential assassin.” He added, “I do not need to convince anyone that this concern involves the possibility of state-sponsored terrorism. This would not be the first such case in Europe, as Europe has seen incidents of this kind before. However, in Poland it would be the first case of a politically motivated assassination carried out on behalf of a foreign state.”
The language of official alarm points to a wider contest between states, with ordinary people left to live under the fallout. Poland, a NATO and European Union member, has in recent years become a place of refuge for political dissidents from Russia and Belarus, as well as Ukrainian war refugees. That refuge now sits inside the same security apparatus that offers protection, investigates threats, and decides whose safety is worth defending.
A Wider Pattern of Repression
Since it invaded Ukraine in 2022, Russia has been accused of trying to assassinate its opponents abroad, including targeting exiled activists in France and Lithuania. Officials in Germany have also broken up plots targeting the head of a German weapons supplier to Ukraine and a Ukrainian military official. Polish authorities arrested a man in 2024 in what they said was a plot to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That same year, a Russian helicopter pilot who defected was killed in Spain, with Russian operatives as the prime suspects.
The arrest in Piastów and the investigation into possible Russian involvement now fold one more death into that pattern of transnational intimidation. The victim had already refused offers of protection by Polish authorities, a detail that underscores how even those under threat are forced to navigate the limits of state protection. Meanwhile, the suspect is described through a chain of documents, alleged criminal links, and prior crimes dating to 2022, as the institutions of order sort through the wreckage of another politically charged killing.
For now, Polish officials say the case remains under investigation. The facts they have put forward point to a murder carried out in daylight, a suspect seized in a hostel for foreigners, and a government openly weighing whether a foreign state commissioned the attack. In the background sits the larger apparatus of war, exile, and sabotage that has made refuge in Poland feel less like safety than another front in a conflict already in its fifth year.