2024-09-05 19:52 update: 2024-09-05, 19:55
Fot. PAP/Karol Zienkiewicz
Pavel Rubtsov, a Russian military intelligence (GRU) agent, should not have been granted access to classified documents from the investigation into his case, Polish President Andrzej Duda has said.
Rubtsov, who was detained by Polish law enforcement services in February 2022, was allowed to look into documents from the investigation Polish prosecutors were conducting against him following his repeated requests to do so.
According to the Rzeczpospolita daily, some of the documents were classified.
"The situation is bizarre in the sense that - as I presume - there was already no doubt at that time that this gentleman (Rubtsov - PAP) is a Russian agent, it was already known that he will be part of the exchange organised by the US services (the August prisoner swap between the West and Russia, the biggest one since the Cold War - PAP)," Duda said on Thursday, adding that the Polish Internal Security Agency's officers must have been aware that they were showing records to a Russian spy.
Duda went on to say that Poland's law makes it possible to deny access to investigation records.
"Especially if they are classified records, secret records," he said.
Przemyslaw Nowak, spokesperson for the National Prosecutor's Office, said on Thursday that the files presented to Rubtsov "contained no state secrets that could harm Poland in any way."
According to Nowak, the classified documents described Rubtsov's behaviour.
"There are no secrets in terms of national security, no operational techniques revealed or data allowing for identifying officers running some operation that should not be revealed," Nowak said. (PAP)
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