Investigators believe a group of Poles was hired out to carry out an arson attack on a building used by a Hungarian cultural association in western Ukraine in order to strain Ukrainian-Hungarian relations, according to a report.

Three young Poles have been accused of terrorism over the attack in February 2018, the Polish public broadcaster’s tvp.info website reported.

Prosecutors have discovered that the Poles were to have been paid PLN 1,000 (EUR 230, USD 265) each for setting fire to the building, according to Poland’s niezalezna.pl website.

"This provocation aimed to cause a deterioration in Ukrainian-Hungarian relations,” the tvp.info website cited an officer for Poland’s Internal Security Agency as saying.

“Such ferment is handy for Russia, which is interested in the destabilisation of its western neighbour, where a hybrid war in Donbas is underway," the source was cited by tvp.info as saying.

“And hiring out Polish thugs was beneficial for Russia, because if things went wrong for the people carrying this out, it was possible to antagonise relations between Poles and Ukrainians, which are not in the best shape anyway,” the unnamed source added.

The main suspect is a 28-year-old named only as “Michał P”, according to tvp.info.

The website added that, according to investigators, he had ties with a neo-fascist organisation called Falanga and with the pro-Russian Zmiana (Change) party, whose leader is accused of working for Chinese and Russian intelligence services.

(pk)

Source: tvp.info/niezalezna.pl