Poland Calls on Its Citizens to Leave Belarus

Warsaw is escalating tensions with Minsk — the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has warned its citizens against traveling to Belarus following the detention of a Polish national by Belarusian security forces on suspicion of espionage.

Grzegorz Gawel, born in 1998, was detained in Lepel while receiving a photocopy of a secret document related to the Russian-Belarusian exercises "Zapad-2025." It was established that Gawel had recruited a Belarusian citizen via social media to gather classified military information. The collected data was then transmitted to Poland's Internal Security Agency. The Polish individual paid the Belarusian for this work.

A criminal case has been initiated under the article for "espionage."

The chargé d'affaires of Poland in Belarus was handed a protest note, which emphasized the unacceptability of such actions by Warsaw, describing them as a gross violation of principles of good neighborliness and as causing serious damage to bilateral relations.

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