Polish officers have detained a Ukrainian accused of trying to murder a figure from Ukraine's weapons sector on Moscow's orders, Reuters reported. Investigators say his homemade explosive failed to detonate, and he fled to Poland, where officers detained him. The case is the latest in a run of Russian-directed plots targeting people tied to Ukraine across Europe.

A car bomb that failed

The suspect, named only as Serhii P. under Polish privacy rules, allegedly went after a figure in Ukraine's weapons sector in Irpin, a town in Kyiv Oblast just northwest of the capital. The ABW, Poland's Internal Security Agency, said he planted an improvised explosive device under a car used by the potential victim. The device was meant to be set off remotely with a cellphone, but it "did not detonate due to a malfunction," the agency said.

The suspect, a 63-year-old Ukrainian, fled to Poland after the attempt collapsed and was arrested in Warsaw on 5 August 2026, the Ukrainian outlet NV says. Polish authorities announced the arrest on 20 August and said it kept him from using Poland as a hideout while he dodged investigators. Prosecutors charged him with trying to kill with a bomb and with holding explosives without a permit. The charges carry a floor of 15 years behind bars and a ceiling of life, they said.

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The ABW framed the case as proof that Russian intelligence runs operations far beyond its own borders, using people who move between countries to do the work. For years, Kyiv and Western capitals have said Moscow enlists people — Ukrainians among them — to run sabotage and spying missions, a charge Russia keeps rejecting.

A pattern across Europe

The plot fits a wider Russian campaign. Weeks earlier, Warsaw detained a Russian man whom Moscow had allegedly recruited to murder a Ukrainian-American in the same city. 

Earlier this year, Ukrainian investigators recently exposed a coordinated scheme to kill a Russian dissident and Ukraine supporter in Lithuania, German prosecutors filed sabotage charges against a Ukrainian and a Latvian, and an earlier plot targeted the chief of German arms-maker Rheinmetall.

Poland and the Baltic States have been named prime targets for Russian sabotage over their backing for Kyiv.

German security services believe Russia was preparing to assassinate the head of a company that supplies drones to Ukraine, according to Die Zeit. Two suspected agents who surveilled him have been arrested, and officials warn the case marks a deadlier turn in Russian operations inside Germany.

Surveillance of a drone-maker

Investigators say the target is Stefan Thumann, head of the Bavarian startup Donaustahl, which makes reconnaissance and kamikaze drones for Ukraine. In December 2025, a recruit filmed his home and photographed the nameplate, focusing on the man rather than the company, security services believe. Thumann has been outspoken against Moscow, posting that "Russia doesn't want peace. It wants the destruction of the West."

Two arrests

A foreign intelligence service flagged Thumann as high-risk in December 2025. Bavarian police arrested Serhii N., a former bricklayer from Kharkiv with no intelligence training, then released him before analyzing his phones. The devices later showed contact with Russian intelligence and attempts to trail his father, investigators found. He fled to Spain, and a Romanian woman, Alla S., continued the surveillance. Both were arrested in March 2026, in Spain and North Rhine-Westphalia.

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Russia recruits such disposable agents online, paying people from precarious backgrounds for surveillance, arson, and sabotage, and discarding them afterward. Ukraine's own SBU security service has reported dozens of cases in 2026 of Russia recruiting Ukrainians at home for arson and sabotage, often by forging Ukrainian security summonses to pose as their own government.

The BfV, Germany's domestic intelligence service, classifies the case as a suspected planned assassination. A federal investigating judge was not convinced, so the arrest warrant cites only suspected intelligence-agent activity. Lawyers for both suspects declined to comment.

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A widening threat

A second German arms company is reportedly in Russian intelligence's sights, investigators say. On 11 June, Serbian officers stopped a truck of concealed explosives apparently bound for Bavaria, home to Donaustahl, Quantum Systems, and Helsing. 

The threat has precedent: agents had Rheinmetall chief Armin Papperger watched in 2024, and an FSB killing struck a Georgian exile in Berlin in 2019. It fits a broader Russian sabotage campaign across Europe. 

Thumann, now under guard, still taunts Moscow: 

"You won't break me."