A district court in Sosnowiec, southern Poland, has sentenced Russian citizen Igor Rogov to seven years in prison and his wife Irina to three years for spying on behalf of Russia’s FSB security service and participating in a parcel bomb scheme. The verdict, delivered after a trial held entirely in closed session on national security grounds, is the first known instance in Europe of a former Russian opposition activist being convicted of espionage for Moscow since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. According to Polish court documents and prosecution summaries cited by multiple outlets, Rogov gathered information on Russian opposition members and their support networks in Poland between February and August 2022, passing encrypted data to his wife for transfer to Russian intelligence officers. The couple, who had been granted political asylum in Poland after fleeing Russia in 2022, have been in detention since their arrest two years ago.

Viewed from Warsaw, the case reinforces a pattern of intensifying Russian intelligence activity on Polish soil. Polish counter-intelligence officials, cited in local media, state that since 2023 the Internal Security Agency (ABW) has detained at least 16 foreign nationals on espionage charges, with convictions secured against 14 of them in Lublin in December 2023. The Rogov trial adds a new dimension: the infiltration of émigré opposition circles. Polish prosecutors argued that Rogov, a former coordinator for the now-banned Open Russia movement and a one-time staffer in Alexei Navalny’s Saransk headquarters, was recruited by the FSB years before leaving Russia. In court, Rogov admitted to the collaboration but claimed he acted under duress, first due to university-related pressure and later because the FSB threatened to conscript his father to fight in Ukraine. Irina Rogova acknowledged knowing of her husband’s contacts with the agency but did not plead guilty to the charge of aiding and abetting espionage.

From the perspective of Russian opposition figures and independent Russian-language media, the case exposes the vulnerability of exiled activists to coercion that can extend across borders. Reports in outlets such as Meduza and Dozhd note that Rogov himself disclosed his FSB ties during the investigation, and that the indictment did not cite independent evidence of the link beyond his confession. The second strand of the conviction—Rogov’s role in dispatching a parcel containing explosives via a courier service in July 2024—is described by the investigative outlet Vot Tak as likely part of a Ukrainian intelligence operation transiting Poland without the knowledge of Polish authorities. The package was intercepted at a warehouse in the Łódź region before delivery.

Analysts in European security circles view the sentencing as a signal of Poland’s determination to prosecute hybrid threats, even when they involve individuals who previously positioned themselves as opponents of the Kremlin. The Polish government has repeatedly warned of Russian sabotage and subversion since 2022, and the Rogov case sits alongside a string of convictions for railway sabotage plots, propaganda dissemination, and Wagner Group recruitment. The verdict is not yet final and may be appealed. The couple’s time in pre-trial detention will be deducted from their sentences, meaning Igor Rogov could be released in approximately five years and Irina Rogova in eighteen months, according to court calculations reported by Polish media.