Poland has arrested a Russian hockey player on espionage charges, Polish prosecutors said, making him the 14th person to be arrested in a crackdown on an espionage network in the country.

What was the Russian athlete spying on?

“Russian spies are falling one by one!”, Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro said on Twitter. “A spy operating under the cover of the athlete was arrested. The Russian was a team player of the first national division».

The hockey player had arrived in Poland in October 2021 and was arrested in the Silesia region, prosecutors said.

Both the player and his team were not named. However, local media reports that it is him 20-year-old Maxim S.

According to prosecutors, its activities included the identification of important infrastructuresfor which he was paid.

He will be remanded in custody and faces a 10-year prison sentence.

“Fierce protest” by Moscow

Moscow expressed “strong protest” over the arrests and “demanded an immediate and full explanation”, according to Russian diplomatic spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

The Russian Embassy in Warsaw announced that it has officially requested from the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs information about the accusations against the Russian hockey player.

The country is the target of Russian spies

Poland has become a key hub for the transfer of Western military supplies to Ukraine and for this reason has become a prime target for Russian espionage activities.

In March, Poland announced the dismantling of a Russian espionage network and the arrests of nine people who were preparing acts of sabotage and surveillance of railway routes to Ukraine.

In April, it announced the imposition of a temporary exclusion zone within a 200-meter radius around the Swinoujscie Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminal in northwestern Poland.