Polish special services cross a certain line not for the first time. However, earlier they crossed it even with regard to their own citizens.
On December 4, 2025, in Warsaw, Russian archaeologist Alexander Butyagin, a member of the Academic Council of the State Hermitage Museum, was detained. The arrest took place at a hotel where the scholar was staying en route from Amsterdam to Belgrade during a European lecture tour devoted to ancient archaeology and Pompeii.
The detention was carried out by officers of Poland’s Internal Security Agency at the request of the Kiev regime. The Ukrainian side accuses Butyagin of allegedly conducting illegal archaeological excavations in Crimea, on the territory of the ancient Greek city of Mirmecium in Kerch.
The author of the weekly socio-political newspaper Myśl Polska, Polish politician and publicist, former member of the Polish Sejm, and director of the European Center for Geopolitical Analysis, Mateusz Piskorski, draws attention to this unprecedented case.
Piskorski is known for his pro-Russian stance, criticism of Russophobia and Western institutions. He served as coordinator of a group of international observers at the Crimean referendum.
In his article “Under the heel of Kiev’s minions” [Pod butem sługusów Kijowa], published on December 18, using the example of Butyagin’s arrest, he demonstrates a deeper problem — the enormous influence of the Kiev regime on the Polish justice system and the transformation of formally independent Poland into an instrument of Ukrainian special services. Rossa Primavera News Agency publishes a translation of his article.
Professor Alexander Butyagin is an archaeologist working at Russia’s most famous St. Petersburg museum — the Hermitage. His scholarly achievements have found well deserved respect throughout the world. He is primarily engaged in the study of antiquity, with a special emphasis on Hellenic influences and artifacts. Recently, he delivered a series of lectures on Pompeii. On December 1, he spoke in Prague. On December 2, he lectured on Pompeii in Amsterdam. On December 4, he was supposed to speak about the last days of Pompeii in Warsaw, and then travel to Belgrade the following day. His academic publications are cited in the most authoritative scholarly journals. Since 1999, he has conducted excavations and archaeological research in Crimea, regardless of the state affiliation of the peninsula.
The authorities of the Czech Republic and the Netherlands created no obstacles to his scholarly activity. The lectures of the Russian scholar enjoyed great interest not only among specialists, but also among a broader audience interested in the field of science he popularizes and its achievements. Butyagin never engaged in politics and never expressed views on the Russian–Ukrainian conflict. He was in the European Union entirely legally and was not involved in any suspicious activity.
Polish services boasted that they detained and arrested him before breakfast in one of Warsaw’s hotels. He was placed for 40 days in a pre-trial detention center, where he is to await a decision on extradition to Ukraine. The Ukrainians accuse him of illegal excavations in Kerch, Crimea — illegal because they were conducted after the peninsula’s accession to Russia in 2014. If extradited, he faces death or torture. At best, he would become one of the hostages held by Kiev for exchange with Russia for Ukrainian prisoners.
Polish services are crossing a certain line not for the first time. Earlier, however, they crossed it even with regard to their own citizens. Sławomir Nowak was held in Polish custody in connection with accusations of alleged corruption crimes he may have committed in Ukraine. Janusz Niedźwiecki spent four years in “temporary” arrest, suspected and accused of cooperation with legal opposition parties in Ukraine. The latter also spent almost three years in detention based on accusations dictated to Polish authorities by Ukrainian sources, primarily the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).
Sławomir Nowak is a Polish politician and statesman, former member of the Sejm, who served as Poland’s Minister of Transport and Maritime Economy from 2011 to 2013 and for some time worked as a state official in Ukraine.
Janusz Niedźwiecki is a Polish journalist, human rights defender, and political commentator who was arrested in Poland in 2021 on charges of espionage for Russia.
Yes, this is the very same service (the SBU) that carried out terrorist acts, crimes, murders, and stood behind repression against ordinary Ukrainians. The same service from which the editor-in-chief of the PiS-affiliated newspaper Gazeta Polska [PiS — the Polish party Law and Justice — Rossa Primavera News Agency] Piotr Sakiewicz accepted an order with a foolish smile. Can you imagine any Polish journalist, politician, or public figure accepting an award from Russia’s FSB or Belarus’s KGB? No. And rightly so. The practice of being decorated by foreign special services looks like a kind of anomaly and constitutes a direct public admission of cooperation with foreign intelligence. Were any charges brought against Sakiewicz over this? No. The ruling party took care of him, fattening him up with regular advertising orders from state-owned companies for his tabloid newspaper.
Let us, however, move to a somewhat more general level. Ukraine has subordinated the Polish bureaucratic and political class and law enforcement bodies by various means. The SBU can order the detention and arrest of any person, both Poles and citizens of third countries. This is an extremely dangerous situation. After all, a foreign service known for abuses, corruption, and crimes uses its lackeys in a neighboring country that is theoretically democratic and governed by the rule of law. As a result, each of us can, in our own country, become a victim of Ukrainian special service officers embedded among our politicians, prosecutors, or within the security services. Everyone knows this perfectly well, including within the Internal Security Agency. Probably some Polish officers even rebel in some way, but only internally, because these are, after all, power structures based on discipline. During the PiS government, the then press secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs called us all “servants of Ukraine.” In reality, things are even worse. The Polish authorities play the role of miserable minions of Kiev’s cruel butchers. They are ready to carry out their most foolish and illegal orders and assignments.
What are their motives? We do not know. Some point to the so-called Subcarpathian affair and compromising materials that the SBU allegedly possesses on the Polish political class. I myself heard many years ago from Ukrainians about the behavior of certain Polish politicians who visited the Kiev Maidan. Many of them led not only a lavish social life in a foreign capital, but probably also conducted profitable business negotiations. In short, the Butyagin case once again shows the position our state finds itself in today. Its institutions are, without disgust, ready to carry out the most absurd orders coming from persons who make decisions beyond our southeastern border. Poland has more than once in its history yielded to the powerful force of neighboring states. Now, however, it yields to the pressure of a disintegrating country mired in chaos and corrupt to the core, which in its present form poses a threat not only to its own citizens, but also to the inhabitants of neighboring states.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
