Polish police have arrested a man suspected of participating in the murder of a Russian artist critical of President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Thursday.
The suspect in the daylight murder, which took place on Monday, “is using a Georgian passport,” Tusk wrote in a post on X.
“Services are working to establish the mastermind,” he added.
Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński confirmed the Georgian passport at a news conference in Warsaw and said the suspect is 36 years old.
Kierwiński said the man is suspected of links to organised crime and is being linked by police to other crimes committed in Poland, including some dating to 2022.
“We consider it possible that foreign intelligence services may have been involved,” said Tomasz Siemoniak, Poland’s security services minister, who spoke at the press conference alongside the interior minister.
“Foreign services sometimes hire criminals to carry out operations. We have seen this in previous years. While those cases did not involve murder, criminals were hired to conduct assaults in other countries. We are therefore taking this possibility very seriously,” Siemoniak said.
Semyon Skrepetsky, whose real name is Robert Kuzovkov, was fatally shot three times by an unidentified man armed with a handgun in Biała Podlaska, eastern Poland, according to officials.
When the artist fell to the ground, he was approached by the assailant, who fired two more shots at close range.
Tusk said on Wednesday the artist’s death was probably a “political murder.”
“If it was commissioned by Russia, then this is also a very serious matter with an international dimension,” he continued.
The Polish government says it offered Skrepetsky protection in the past, which he declined.
Two Belarusian citizens were detained in connection with the artist’s death but they have since been released.
Skrepetsky was known for his sometimes provocative caricatures, which targeted prominent Russian political figures, ranging from Putin and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to opposition figure Alexei Navalny and head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov.
One of his best-known works reinterprets a classical Orthodox icon, depicting Stalin cradling Putin in place of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus.
Skrepetsky moved to Poland in 2021, saying he feared political persecution in Russia.
In exile, he attended Russian opposition events while openly criticising the opposition itself.
Since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has been accused of trying to assassinate its opponents abroad, including targeting exiled activists in France and Lithuania.
Officials in Germany have also broken up plots targeting the head of a German weapons supplier to Ukraine and a Ukrainian military official.
Moscow has denied any involvement in these attacks.
Additional sources • AP, AFP