WARSAW (AP) — A Russian plot to kill a Ukrainian American citizen in Warsaw was thwarted by Poland before it could be carried out, the Polish prime minister said Thursday, marking the first time in decades that a Western leader has publicly accused Moscow of plotting to kill a U.S. citizen.
Western officials have previously warned that Russia has stepped up a campaign of targeted killings since President Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, saying they have disrupted several plots across Europe. But Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said this incident was unprecedented.
It was the first time that “someone on the order of Russia” sought to attack an American citizen on the territory of another NATO country, Tusk said Thursday.
The suspect, who was allegedly recruited by Russia's secret services, was detained by Polish authorities on Aug. 7.
The American Ukrainian citizen “was uncomfortable for the Putin regime,” Tusk said in a news conference.
The operation was carried out in cooperation with U.S. services, said Tomasz Siemoniak, Poland’s minister overseeing intelligence services. He said the targeted victim was a U.S. citizen “of Ukrainian origin.” Officials did not immediately provide further details.
The Russian Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Russia has long been accused of targeting its enemies abroad, including by using rare poisons. But intelligence officials previously told The Associated Press that Russia’s security services are now more brazen in their choice of targets, going after Russian activists and foreign supporters of Ukraine as well as military defectors.
Western officials see the campaign as connected to Russia’s broader efforts to undermine European countries that support Ukraine. The AP has mapped about 200 acts of sabotage, arson and other disruption across Europe since the start of the war that officials have linked to Russia. President Vladimir Putin told AP in May that Russia is not waging a sabotage campaign against Europe.
British authorities accused Russia of being behind the killing of former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006 with radioactive polonium and of attempting to kill former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2018 with the nerve agent Novichok.
German authorities also said Russia organized the 2019 killing of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a former Chechen rebel commander who was shot in a Berlin park by Vadim Krasikov, a hitman who was later greeted by Putin after he was exchanged in a spy swap.
In June, a Russian artist who was critical of Putin was shot and killed at close range near his home in eastern Poland. Robert Kuzovkov, known by the pseudonym Semyon Skrepetsky was critical of Putin and Tusk said at the time that the killing had the hallmarks of a political assassination. He suggested it was possible Russia was behind it but Polish officials have not yet attributed it to Moscow.
Last year French officials disrupted a plot which they believe was aimed at killing Vladimir Osechkin, a Russian exile who lives under police protection and works to help military defectors flee Putin’s war. Lithuanian officials also disrupted a plot last year to kill a Lithuanian supporter of Ukraine and another against a Russian activist. Officials in Germany have similarly broken up two plots: one to target the head of a German weapons company supplying Ukraine, the other against a Ukrainian military official.
Polish authorities arrested a man in 2024 in what they said was a plot to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And that same year, a Russian helicopter pilot who defected was killed in Spain — with Russian operatives the prime suspects.
“This campaign is not by accident or chance,” a senior European intelligence official previously told the AP. “There is political authorization.”
Burrows reported from London. Stefanie Dazio in Berlin contributed to this report.
FILE - Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk arrives for the EU summit in Brussels, Thursday, June 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Omar Havana, File)
Oklahoma put a man to death Thursday for killing his girlfriend in 2005 in the first of three executions scheduled for the same day in the U.S.
In the other executions, a Tennessee man faces death for killing a motel maid and an Alabama man will be executed after dropping all his appeals in the killing of a 5-year-old girl he paid her mother to abuse.
Eleven states carried out executions in 2025 in the U.S. If the Tennessee and Alabama deaths take place, six states will have had executions in 2026.
The last time three executions were held on the same day was Jan. 7, 2010, when Louisiana, Ohio and Texas put inmates to death. Three executions were scheduled on the same day in 2018, but only one went forward after a Texas man was granted a reprieve and prison officials in Alabama had problems with the IV line.
Florida executed two men on the same day in July and has put 31 prisoners to death since the start of 2025.
Tennessee plans to execute Anthony Darrell Hines for the 1985 murder of Catherine Jean Jenkins.
Hines stabbed Jenkins to death while the 54-year-old was working as a motel maid in Kingston Springs. He was sentenced to death in 1986, won an appeal for a new sentencing hearing and was again sentenced to death in 1989.
Hines' execution date comes just three months after the attempted lethal injection of another man was called off because of a problem inserting an IV.
Hines, 66, appealed unsuccessfully to the governor and the courts, saying that the doctor who oversaw the May execution was unqualified and likely to botch his execution as well. He said his thinness and muscular atrophy after two strokes mean he could face problems with an IV as well.
During the attempted execution of Tony Carruthers, the IV team established a primary line right away but then worked for more than an hour trying to insert a backup line. Carruthers' lawyer witnessed the attempts and said the team tried to insert an IV in Carruthers’ arm, hand and foot before attempting to insert a central line.
In the end, Gov. Bill Lee called off the execution and gave Carruthers a one-year reprieve.
The state has declined to say whether the same doctor will preside over Hines’ execution. Regardless, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled Hines had not proven the doctor was unqualified and suggested the problems were an isolated mishap.
Alabama is scheduled to execute Jeremy Williams by lethal injection for the 2021 rape and murder of a 5-year-old Georgia girl.
Williams, who pleaded guilty to killing Kamarie Holland, declined to appeal and asked for his death sentence to be carried out.
Williams, 42, raped and strangled Holland after offering her mother $2,500 for the child to perform a sex act, prosecutors said.
Williams filmed his attack on the girl and kept her body to continue to abuse, prosecutors said.
“To see on video what he did to this baby, what a grown man could do to a child, it’s shocking, it’s horrible, it’s disgusting,” Russell County District Attorney Richard Chancey said. “It’s just a level of evil.”
Williams also was a suspect in the 2005 death of his infant daughter in Alaska but charges were not filed until 2022.
Corey Holland, Kamarie’s father, said his daughter was an exuberant 5-year-old who loved princesses and made people laugh.
“She loved playing dress-up, all her little Halloween costumes and her princess stuff I got her. She liked anything girly,” Corey Holland said.
It will be Alabama’s first execution of the year if it goes forward. A nitrogen gas execution was halted in June after a federal judge ruled the method unconstitutional.
The girl's mother is serving a 20-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to sex trafficking.
Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez, 70, died by lethal injection at 10:13 a.m CDT at the state’s penitentiary in rural McAlester.
He was the third person put to death this year in Oklahoma and the 20th under Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, who leaves office in January after eight years.
Convicted of fatally shooting his girlfriend at their Oklahoma City home in 2003, Cuesta-Rodriguez had said he regretted killing Olimpia Fisher and didn't ask a board for clemency.
Fisher, 43, planned to leave Cuesta-Rodriguez when he shot her in one eye and then waited about eight minutes as she screamed for help before firing the fatal shot into her other eye.
“He made her suffer because she dared to live beyond his control,” Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond told the state’s Pardon and Parole Board on July 14.
Last month, the board voted 3-1 against recommending clemency for Cuesta-Rodriguez. His attorneys had asked the board to recommend he serve life in prison, saying he had a difficult childhood in Cuba and suffered from brain damage, post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression with psychotic episodes.
Associated Press writer Jeffrey Collins contributed.
This Aug. 18, 2025, photo provided by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections shows Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez, who was sentenced to death for the 2003 fatal shooting of his girlfriend. (Oklahoma Department of Corrections via AP)
This undated photo, courtesy of the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC), shows death row inmate Anthony Darrell Hines at an unknown location in Tennessee. (TDOC Communications via AP)
FILE - This Oct. 9, 2014, file photo shows the gurney in the execution chamber at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Okla. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)
