Saboteurs and explosive sex toys How Europe and US scrambled to track down Russian network

On a frosty November morning last year, a broad-shouldered man with short grey hair staggered, exhausted, into a small guesthouse on the outskirts of Bosanska Krupa – a quaint Bosnian border town where ancient stone bridges span the emerald-green waters of the Una River.

- Pjotr Sauer Shaun Walker

Alexander Bezrukavyi had been on the run for more than three months, pursued by European security services who accused him of working for Russia's military intelligence agency, the GRU.

Bezrukavyi, 44, had left Croatia on foot two days earlier, navigating dense Balkan forests and rugged hills to cross into Bosnia illicitly.

As evening arrived, Bezrukavyi messaged his wife, promising her that they would soon be reunited in Russia, and contacted his friend to finalize his plans for getting back home, using new forged papers and a flight from neighboring Serbia.

But a few hours later, at about 2am, a group of Bosnian intelligence officers and police burst into his room. Bezrukavyi's arrest was part of a Polish-led operation targeting a suspected Russian-backed criminal network. The cell is accused of sending parcels containing explosives on cargo planes across Europe, triggering fires at three locations.

Polish prosecutors believe Bezrukavyi was part of a plot to send shipments with explosives to the US and Canada, a brazen plan that would have marked a major escalation of a sabotage campaign that western security officials believe Moscow has unleashed over the past three years across Europe.

Western officials believe the exploding parcels could have led to a plane crash and mass casualties.

When intelligence about the alleged plot reached Washington, it caused so much alarm that top officials in Joe Biden's administration had called their Russian counterparts to demand that Vladimir Putin call it off.

On 13 February, three months after his arrest in Bosnia, Bezrukavyi was extradited to Poland amid much fanfare.

“A Russian hiding in Bosnia-Herzegovina, suspected of coordinating acts of sabotage against Poland, the US, and other allies, was extradited to Poland and arrested,” the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, wrote on X.