Poland on Wednesday said its prosecutors had filed espionage charges against a Russian-born man who has already been released from prison as part of a major Moscow-West swap deal.
In the biggest prisoner exchange since the Cold War, Warsaw freed a Russian-Spanish national suspected of spying for Moscow while posing as a freelance journalist who covered the war in Ukraine.
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Pablo Gonzalez had a Russian passport under the name Pavel Alexeevich Rubtsov as he was born in Moscow but moved to Spain at the age of nine.
He was detained by the Polish intelligence services near the border with Ukraine on February 28, 2022 -- and had been held in pre-trial detention until he was freed in the swap.
On Wednesday, Polish prosecutors said they had charged him with spying on behalf of Russia's GRU military intelligence service.
His activities "included obtaining and providing information, spreading disinformation and conducting operational reconnaissance", the prosecutor's office said in a statement.
Gonzalez was allegedly operating between 2016 and 2022 in the capital Warsaw and in Poland's southeastern border city of Przemysl which has become a hub for Ukraine aid.
The prosecutors said Gonzalez remained in pre-trial detention until July 31 but did not otherwise address the swap deal in the statement nor provide details about the next steps in Gonzalez's case.
He was among 10 Russians traded for 16 Westerners and Russians imprisoned in Russia in a dramatic exchange on the airport tarmac in Turkey's capital Ankara on August 1.
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