Polish security services have detained a high ranking officer on suspicion of spying for a foreign country, the Polish defence ministry said Wednesday, with media reporting the country in question was Russia. "The national defence ministry detained a Polish army officer today (Wednesday) on suspicion of being a member of a foreign intelligence service based on evidence collected by the army counterintelligence service," a defence ministry statement said.
The Polish PAP news agency and the website of commercial broadcaster TVN24 reported the suspect was taken into custody by Poland's internal security agency ABW. "It's a rather important person, with wide-ranging contacts," PAP reported. A military prosecutor quoted by TVN said the ABW agents had made the arrest inside a defence ministry building.
The commercial Radio Zet reported two men had been taken into custody: a Polish army colonel and a lawyer with dual Polish-Russian citizenship. Poland - an ex-communist state of 38 million people that joined Nato in 1999 - has been among the most vocal eastern members urging the defence alliance to beef up its eastern flank in the wake of the Ukraine crisis. Russia's role in the conflict has prompted the worse stand-off between Moscow and the West since the Cold War.