In mid-February, a court in Krakow sentenced two Russian citizens to five and a half years in prison for posting hundreds of recruitment ads for the Wagner mercenary group in Polish cities. Convicted of terrorism and espionage, the two men were found guilty of working on behalf of Russian intelligence services as part of what the judge characterized as a “hybrid war” against Poland, carried out amid Russia’s full-scale war in neighboring Ukraine. The Polish investigation also revealed that the two men were recruited through Russian nationalist groups linked to the Spartak Moscow soccer fan movement and prominent “Orthodox oligarch” Konstantin Malofeev. For Meduza, Polish journalist Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska reports on the landmark trial and what it reveals about Russia’s covert operations in Europe.
