Russia announced a 23-year sentence for "Polish spy"
The Moscow City Court sentenced Russian citizen Georgy Piragov to 23 years in a strict-regime penal colony on charges of treason and espionage for Polish special services. This was reported by the Russian FSB on August 14, stating that the sentence, handed down in July, has come into legal force, writes "Novaya Gazeta. Europe".
Georgy Piragov
According to the Russian special service, after the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Piragov left Russia. In April 2022, while in Poland, he allegedly established contact with a representative of Polish military intelligence and received a task to collect and transmit secret information about Russian weapons used in the war against Ukraine.
The FSB claims that Piragov used his connections with employees of the Russian military-industrial complex, obtained classified information about the production and use of missile systems, as well as personal data of people who had access to state secrets. At the same time, the Russian side did not provide public evidence for its accusations.
In addition, Piragov was accused of assisting the Ukrainian army. According to the FSB, he transferred cryptocurrency for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, purchased military equipment, and organized its delivery from Poland to Ukraine.
The trial against Piragov began in May 2026 and was held behind closed doors.
According to independent Russian journalists, Piragov was detained back in 2024. After the start of the full-scale war, he moved to Georgia, where he worked as an industrial climber. In the summer of 2024, the man went on a business trip to Uzbekistan, after which he stopped communicating. Later, his relatives learned that he was in Moscow's "Matrosskaya Tishina" pre-trial detention center on a treason case. The circumstances of his detention and delivery to Russia remain unknown.
Russian authorities announced the sentence the day after Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk's statement about the prevention of an alleged crime in Warsaw.
On August 13, Tusk reported that Polish special services had detained a Russian citizen who, according to the Polish side, was recruited by Russian special services to prepare the assassination of a US and Ukrainian citizen. The suspect was detained on August 7 with the participation of Poland's Internal Security Agency and police.
Tusk did not reveal the name of the alleged victim, but stated that this person was chosen by the Russian authorities as inconvenient for Vladimir Putin's regime. Today information emerged that the target for the assassin was to be the well-known Ukrainian blogger and rapper Albert Vasiliev, better known by the pseudonym Kyivstoner.
Against this background, Polish authorities report an increase in Russian espionage and sabotage activities in Poland since the start of the full-scale war. This includes attempts at recruitment, sabotage, and other operations aimed against infrastructure, the Ukrainian diaspora, and people critical of the Kremlin.