Russian Couple Sentenced in Poland for Espionage and Bomb Plot

On 9 July, the District Court in Sosnowiec, Poland delivered its verdict: seven years for Russian citizen Igor Rogov, found guilty of spying for the Kremlin and plotting a nitroglycerin bomb attack. His wife, Irina, was sentenced to three years for aiding and abetting him.

Outside the courthouse, a friend of Irina's told Statement that since her arrest, more than 13,000 Polish zlotys ($3,420) had gone toward Irina's defense and other expenses.

The geography tells its own story. Sosnowiec sits less than 100 km from the Polish-Slovak border, close enough that the couple made trips across it. Yet their actual route into the European Union ran through Poland, the country that ultimately granted them asylum after they left Russia for Georgia in 2021, citing political persecution. Polish authorities detained Rogov in July 2024, not long after he returned from the Czech Republic. His wife followed him into custody in November of that year.

Reading of the verdict. Video: Daniel Halaj/Statement

Opposition Credentials, Hidden Habits

Over the course of the several-month trial, Rogov admitted to collaborating with Russia, though his account of why was self-serving. The Russian side, he claimed, had identified him as a former opposition activist linked to Alexei Navalny and used that against him: work for them, or watch his father, Vyacheslav, get drafted by the ministry of defense and sent to fight in Ukraine.

Rogov was a regular at gatherings of Russian political exiles, evenings that typically ran from restaurant to bar and back. His roommate, Danila Buzanov, told Statement that he himself could not keep pace, financially, with how often Rogov showed up.

Rogov's explanation, when Buzanov pressed him on where the money for these outings was coming from given that he had no job, was that he was living off the proceeds of selling his car in Russia. Novaya Gazeta Evropa, the Russian émigré investigative portal, checked the story and found that the car had fetched just 460,000 rubles ($5,975).

That sum would not have covered the lifestyle Rogov was maintaining without a regular income, let alone for long. Buzanov told Statement that Rogov was using drugs several times a week, a habit that itself demanded significant funds. Multiple sources gave Novaya Gazeta Evropa the same account.

Irina Rogova in Bratislava in 2022. Photo: Irina Rogova/Facebook

A Package Full of Explosives

The text came on the evening of 25 July 2024: a package had arrived for Rogov at his friend's student dorm. Buzanov, who received it, texted Rogov to say so. The chat history he later showed the Statement editor tells its own story: Rogov had not been expecting anything. By the time he made it to the dorm, a bomb squad technician was already on site.

Some Polish media outlets have reported that the package originated in Ukraine and crossed the border with a model, Chrystyna S., who has said she had no idea what she was carrying. Statement put the question directly to the Polish Border Guard: is it actually possible to move across the border the explosives and other components needed to build a functional bomb, the same components later recovered from the package addressed to Rogov. The border guard would not answer.

Rogov has denied plotting a bomb attack alongside one Russian and two Ukrainian citizens, insisting his role was limited to espionage. What he does not deny is the intelligence work itself: between February and August 2022, he gathered information on Russian opposition activists in Poland, along with the local institutions, groups and citizens helping them.

That intelligence had a courier. It was Rogov's wife who passed the encrypted data to agents of Russia's Federal Security Service, and it was through her that Buzanov first found out his friend had been informing on him. The revelation came out almost by accident: after catching her husband with another woman, Irina, furious, told Buzanov the truth, that Rogov had been reporting him to the FSB all along.

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A Trial Held in Secret

Secrecy defined the proceedings from the start. When the trial opened in January 2026, the prosecutor's office and the Internal Security Agency cited a threat to national security, and every hearing that followed was held behind closed doors. Neither Rogov nor his wife was present on 9 July, when the verdict was finally read out to the assembled media and public.

That verdict is not the end of the story. Irina's defense attorney, after consulting with her client, has left open the possibility of an appeal. And under Polish law, time already spent in pretrial detention counts toward the sentence, which puts Rogov's release five years out and his wife's in a year and a half.

What comes after release worries Rogov more than prison itself. In a letter to Buzanov written in December 2025, he said he feared losing his asylum status and being deported back to Russia once freed. The letter offers a clue as to why: it suggests he has been classified as a particularly dangerous prisoner.