Britain’s chief foreign minister plans to make a standalone visit to China, a move designed to further boost economic and diplomatic engagement with Beijing in the wake of an imminent trip by Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Yvette Cooper said she “certainly will” travel to the country after Starmer moved her to the role of foreign secretary in September. She declined to comment on a possible date or whether it would be this year. Cooper’s aim will be unsurprising to many, given Cabinet ministers including Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Cooper’s predecessor David Lammy and the former Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds all visited China last year in a drumbeat that will culminate in Starmer’s visit, widely expected around the end of January. However, they indicate that Britain’s ruling Labour Party has no intention of cooling a courtship that has generated significant opposition — including from some of its own MPs — due to concerns over China’s human rights record and espionage activity. Cooper herself said Britain takes security issues around China “immensely seriously,” adding: “That involves transnational repression, it involves the espionage threats and challenges that we face.” Speaking to POLITICO ahead of a visit Thursday to the Arctic, where China is taking an increasing strategic interest, Cooper added: “There are also some wider economic security issues around, for example, the control of critical minerals around the world, and some of those issues.  “So we’re very conscious of the broad range of China threats that are posed alongside what we also know is China’s role as being our third-largest trading partner, and so the complexity of the relationship with China and the work that needs to done.” SECURITY TAKEN ‘VERY SERIOUSLY’ Labour officials have repeatedly emphasised their desire to engage directly with the world’s second-largest economy, including frank dialogue on areas where they disagree. Starmer said in December that he rejected a “binary choice” between having a golden age or freezing China out. However, the timing is acutely sensitive for the Labour government, which is likely to approve plans for a new Chinese “mega-embassy” in London in the coming days. The site near Tower Bridge is very close to telecommunications cables that run to the capital’s financial district. Cooper declined to answer directly whether she had assured U.S. counterparts about the embassy plans, after a Trump administration official told the Telegraph newspaper the White House was “deeply concerned” by them. Keir Starmer said in December that he rejected a “binary choice” between having a golden age or freezing China out. | Pool Photo by Ludovic Marin via EPA The foreign secretary said: “The Home Office, the foreign office, also the security agencies take all of those security issues very seriously, and we also brief our allies on security issues as well.” However, Cooper appeared to defend the prospect of approving the plans — which have run parallel to Britain’s aim to rebuild its own embassy in Beijing.  “All countries have embassies,” she said. “We have embassies all around the world, including in Beijing.” She added: “Of course, security is an important part of the considerations around all embassies. So we need to have those diplomatic relationships, those communications. We also have to make sure that security is taken very seriously. The U.K. and the U.S. have a particularly close security partnership. So we do share a lot of information intelligence, and we have that deep-rooted discussion.” Asked if she plans to make her own visit to China, Cooper responded: “I certainly will do so.”

In the desolate Arctic desert of Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, Europeans are building defenses against a new, up-and-coming security threat: space hacks. A Lithuanian company called Astrolight is constructing a ground station, with support from the European Space Agency, that will use laser beams to download voluminous data from satellites in a fast and secure manner, it announced last month.  It’s just one example of how Europe is moving to harden the security of its satellites, as rising geopolitical tensions and an expanding spectrum of hybrid threats are pushing space communications to the heart of the bloc’s security plans. For years, satellite infrastructure was treated by policymakers as a technical utility rather than a strategic asset. That changed in 2022, when a cyberattack on the Viasat satellite network coincided with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.   Satellites have since become popular targets for interference, espionage and disruption. The European Commission in June warned that space was becoming “more contested,” flagging increasing cyberattacks and attempts at electronic interference targeting satellites and ground stations. Germany and the United Kingdom warned earlier this year of the growing threat posed by Russian and Chinese space satellites, which are regularly spotted spying on their satellites.  EU governments are now racing to boost their resilience and reduce reliance on foreign technology, both through regulations like the new Space Act and investments in critical infrastructure. The threat is crystal clear in Greenland, Laurynas Mačiulis, the chief executive officer of Astrolight, said. “The problem today is that around 80 percent of all the [space data] traffic is downlinked to a single location in Svalbard, which is an island shared between different countries, including Russia,” he said in an interview. Europe’s main Arctic ground station sits in Svalbard and supports both the navigation systems of Galileo and Copernicus. While the location is strategic, it is also extremely sensitive due to nearby Russian and Chinese activities. Crucially, the station relies on a single undersea cable to connect to the internet, which has been damaged several times. “In case of intentional or unintentional damage of this cable, you lose access to most of the geo-intelligence satellites, which is, of course, very critical. So our aim is to deploy a complementary satellite ground station up in Greenland,” Mačiulis said. THE MUSK OF IT ALL A centerpiece of Europe’s ambitions to have secure, European satellite communication is IRIS², a multibillion-euro secure connectivity constellation pitched in 2022 and designed to rival Elon Musk’s Starlink system. “Today, communications — for instance in Ukraine — are far too dependent on Starlink,” said Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the founding chairman of political consultancy Rasmussen Global, speaking at an event in Brussels in November. “That dependence rests on the shifting ideas of an American billionaire. That’s too risky. We have to build a secure communications system that is independent of the United States.” The European system, which will consist of 18 satellites operating in low and medium Earth orbit, aims to provide Europe with fast and encrypted communication. “Even if someone intercepts the signal [of IRIS² ], they will not be able to decrypt it,” Piero Angeletti, head of the Secure Connectivity Space Segment Office at the European Space Agency, told POLITICO. “This will allow us to have a secure system that is also certified and accredited by the national security entities.” The challenge is that IRIS² is still at least four years away from becoming operational. WHO’S IN CHARGE? While Europe beefs up its secure satellite systems, governments are still streamlining how they can coordinate cyber defenses and space security. In many cases, that falls to both space or cyber commands, which, unlike traditional military units, are relatively new and often still being built out. Clémence Poirier, a cyberdefense researcher at the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich, said that EU countries must now focus on maturing them. “European states need to keep developing those commands,” she told POLITICO. “Making sure that they coordinate their action, that there are clear mandates and responsibilities when it comes to cyber security, cyber defensive operations, cyber offensive operations, and also when it comes to monitoring the threat.” Industry, too, is struggling to fill the gaps. Most cybersecurity firms do not treat space as a sector in its own right, leaving satellite operators in a blind spot. Instead, space systems are folded into other categories: Earth-observation satellites often fall under environmental services, satellite TV under media, and broadband constellations like Starlink under internet services. That fragmentation makes it harder for space companies to assess risk, update threat models or understand who they need to defend against. It also complicates incident response: while advanced tools exist for defending against cyberattacks on terrestrial networks, those tools often do not translate well to space systems. “Cybersecurity in space is a bit different,” Poirier added. “You cannot just implement whatever solution you have for your computers on Earth and just deploy that to your satellite.”

LONDON — The U.K. government is “dragging its heels” on whether to classify China as a major threat to Britain’s national security, the parliament’s intelligence watchdog warned on Monday. Lawmakers on the Intelligence and Security Committee — which has access to classified briefings as part of its work overseeing Britain’s intelligence services — said they are “concerned” by apparent inaction over whether to designate Beijing as a top-level threat when it comes to influencing Britain. Ministers have been under pressure to put China on the “enhanced tier” of Britain’s Foreign Influence Registration Scheme — a tool to protect the economy and society from covert hostile activity. Both Iran and Russia have been placed on the top tier, which adds a new layer of restrictions and accountability to their activities in Britain. The government has so far resisted calls to add China to that list, even though Beijing has been accused of conducting state-threat activities in the U.K. such as industrial espionage, cyber-attacks and spying on politicians.  In its annual report the Committee said British intelligence agency MI5 had previously told them that measures like the registration scheme would “have proportionately more effect against … Chinese activity.” The Committee said “hostile activity by Russian, Iranian and Chinese state-linked actors is multi-faceted and complex,” adding that the threat of “state-sponsored assassination, attacks and abductions” of perceived dissidents has “remained at a higher level than we have seen in previous years.”  It added that while there are “a number of difficult trade-offs involved” when dealing with Beijing, it has “previously found that the Government has been reluctant to prioritise security considerations when it comes to China.” “The Government should swiftly come to a decision on whether to add China to the Enhanced Tier of the [Foreign Influence Registration Scheme],” the Committee said, demanding that it be provided a “full account” to “ensure that security concerns have not been overlooked in favour of economic considerations.” The pressure comes as U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer prepares to visit China in January — the first British leader to visit the country since Theresa May in 2018.  A government spokesperson said: “National security is the first duty of this government. We value the [Intelligence and Security Committee]’s independent oversight and the thoroughness of their scrutiny. “This report underscores the vital, complex work our agencies undertake daily to protect the UK. “This Government is taking a consistent, long term and strategic approach to managing the UK’s relations with China, rooted in UK and global interests. We will cooperate where we can and challenge where we must.”

LONDON — On the face of it, the new MI6 chief’s first speech featured many of the same villains and heroes as those of her predecessors. But in her first public outing Monday, Blaise Metreweli, the first female head of the U.K.’s foreign intelligence service, sent a strong signal that she intends to put her own stamp on the role – as she highlighted a wave of inter-connected threats to western democracies. Speaking at MI6’s HQ in London, Metreweli, who took over from Richard Moore in October, highlighted a confluence of geo-political and technological disruptions, warning “the frontline is everywhere” and adding “we are now operating in a space between peace and war.” In a speech shot through with references to a shifting transatlantic order and the growth of disinformation, Metreweli made noticeably scant  reference to the historically close relationship with the U.S. in intelligence gathering — the mainstay of the U.K.’s intelligence compact for decades. Instead, she highlighted that a “new bloc and identities are forming and alliances reshaping.” That will be widely seen to reflect an official acknowledgement that the second Donald Trump administration has necessitated a shift in the security services towards cultivating more multilateral relationships. By comparison with a lengthy passage on the seriousness of the Russia threat to Britain, China got away only with a light mention of its cyber attack tendencies towards the U.K. — and was referred to more flatteringly as “a country where a central transformation  is  taking place this century.” Westminster hawks will note that Metreweli — who grew up in Hong Kong and  so knows the Chinese system close-up — walked gingerly around the risk of conflict in the  South China Sea and Beijing’s espionage activities targeting British politicians – and even its royals. In a carefully-placed line, she reflected that she was  “going to break with tradition and won’t give you a global threat tour.” Moore, her predecessor, was known for that approach, which delighted those who enjoyed a plain-speaking MI6 boss giving pithy analysis of global tensions and their fallout, but frustrated some in the Foreign Office who believed the affable Moore could be too unguarded in his comments on geo-politics. The implicit suggestion from the new chief was that China needs to be handled differently to the forthright engagement with “aggressive, expansionist and revisionist” Russia. The reasons may well lie in the aftermath of a bruising argument within Whitehall about how to handle the recent case of two Britons who were arrested for spying for China, and with a growth-boosting visit to Beijing by the prime minister scheduled for 2026. Sources in the service suggest the aim of the China strategy is to avoid confrontation, the better to further intelligence-gathering and have a more productive economic relationship with Beijing. More hardline interpreters of the Secret Intelligence Service will raise eyebrows at her suggestion that the “convening power” of the service would enable it to “ defuse tensions.” But there was no doubt about Metreweli’s deep concern at the impacts of social-media disinformation and distortion, in a framing which seemed just as worried about U.S. tech titans as conventional state-run threats:  “We are being contested from battlefield to boardroom — and even our brains — as disinformation manipulates our understanding of each other.” Declaring that “some  algorithms become as powerful as states,” seemed to tilt at outfits like Elon Musk’s X and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta-owned Facebook. Metreweli warned that “hyper personalized tools could become a new vector for conflict and control,” pushing their effects on societies and individuals  in “minutes not months – my service must operate in this new context too.” The new boss used the possessive pronoun, talking about “my service” in her speech several times – another sign that she intends to put a distinctive mark of the job, now that she has, at the age of just 48,  inherited the famous green-ink pen in which the head of the service signs correspondence.  Metreweli is experienced operator in war zones including Iraq who spent a secondment with MI5, the domestic intelligence service, and won the job in large part because of her experience in the top job via MI6’s science and technology “Q”  Branch. She clearly wants to expedite changes in the service – saying agents must be as fluent in computer coding as foreign languages. She is also expected to try and address a tendency in the service to harvest information, without a clear focus on the action that should follow – the product of a glut of intelligence gathered via digital means and AI. She  was keen to stress that the human factor is at the heart of it all — an attempt at reassurance for spies and analysts wondering if they might be replaced by AI agents as the job of gathering intelligence in the era of facial recognition and biometrics gets harder.  Armed with a steely gaze Metreweli speaks fluent human, occasionally with a small smile. She is also the first incumbent of the job to wear a very large costume jewelry beetle brooch on her sombre navy attire. No small amount of attention in Moscow and Beijing could go into decoding that.

DUBLIN — Neutral and poorly armed Ireland — long viewed as “Europe’s blind spot” — announced Thursday it will spend €1.7 billion on improved military equipment, capabilities and facilities to deter drones and potential Russian sabotage of undersea cables. The five-year plan, published as Defense Minister Helen McEntee visited the Curragh army base near Dublin,  aims in part to reassure European allies that their leaders will be safe from attack when Ireland — a non-NATO member largely dependent on neighboring Britain for its security — hosts key EU summits in the second half of next year. McEntee said Ireland intends to buy and deploy €19 million in counter-drone technology “as soon as possible, not least because of the upcoming European presidency.” Ireland’s higher military spending — representing a 55 percent increase from previous commitments — comes barely a week after a visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy exposed Ireland’s inability to secure its own seas and skies. Five unmarked drones buzzed an Irish naval vessel supposed to be guarding the flight path of Zelenskyy’s plane shortly after the Ukrainian leader touched down at Dublin Airport. The Irish ship didn’t fire at the drones, which eventually disappeared. Irish authorities have been unable to identify their source, but suspect that they were operated from an unidentified ship later spotted in European Space Agency satellite footage. The Russian embassy in Dublin denied any involvement. Ireland’s navy has just eight ships, but sufficient crews to operate only two at a time, even though the country has vast territorial waters containing critical undersea infrastructure and pipelines that supply three-fourths of Ireland’s natural gas. The country has no fighter jets and no military-grade radar and sonar. Some but not all of those critical gaps will be plugged by 2028, McEntee pledged. She said Ireland would roll out military-grade radar starting next year, buy sonar systems for the navy, and acquire up to a dozen helicopters, including four already ordered from Airbus. The army would upgrade its Swiss-made fleet of 80 Piranha III armored vehicles and develop drone and anti-drone units. The air force’s fixed-wing aircraft will be replaced by 2030 — probably by what would be Ireland’s first wing of combat fighters. Thursday’s announcement coincided with publication of an independent assessment of Ireland’s rising security vulnerabilities on land, sea and air. The report, coauthored by the Dublin-based think tank IIEA and analysts at Deloitte, found that U.S. multinationals operating in Ireland were at risk of cyberattacks and espionage by Russian, Chinese and Indian intelligence agents operating in the country.

Denmark’s military intelligence service has for the first time classified the U.S. as a security risk, a striking shift in how one of Washington’s closest European allies assesses the transatlantic relationship. In its 2025 intelligence outlook published Wednesday, the Danish Defense Intelligence Service warned that the U.S. is increasingly prioritizing its own interests and “using its economic and technological strength as a tool of power,” including toward allies and partners. “The United States uses economic power, including in the form of threats of high tariffs, to enforce its will and no longer excludes the use of military force, even against allies,” it said, in a pointed reference to Washington trying to wrest control of Greenland from Denmark. The assessment is one of the strongest warnings about the U.S. to come from a European intelligence service. In October, the Dutch spies said they had stopped sharing some intelligence with their U.S. counterparts, citing political interference and human rights concerns. The Danish warning underscores European unease as Washington leverages industrial policy more aggressively on the global stage, and highlights the widening divide between the allies, with the U.S. National Security Strategy stating that Europe will face the “prospect of civilizational erasure” within the next 20 years. The Danish report also said that “there is uncertainty about how China-U.S. relations will develop in the coming years” as Beijing’s rapid rise has eroded the U.S.’s long-held position as the undisputed global power. Washington and Beijing are now locked in a contest for influence, alliances and critical resources, which has meant the U.S. has “significantly prioritized” the geographical area around it — including the Arctic — to reduce China’s influence. “The USA’s increasingly strong focus on the Pacific Ocean is also creating uncertainty about the country’s role as the primary guarantor of security in Europe,” the report said. “The USA’s changed policy places great demands on armaments and cooperation between European countries to strengthen deterrence against Russia.” In the worst-case scenario, the Danish intelligence services predict that Western countries could find themselves in a situation in a few years where both Russia and China are ready to fight their own regional wars in the Baltic Sea region and the Taiwan Strait, respectively.

BERLIN — Germany will launch a new federal counter-drone unit as concerns mount over a surge of suspicious drones overflying military sites and critical infrastructure, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said Tuesday. The formation will be part of the federal police’s national special operations arm, and will be trained and certified specifically for drone detection and neutralization, Dobrindt said at an event outside Berlin. The unit will eventually grow to 130 officers, deployed across Germany and moved quickly to hot spots when needed. Germany has over €100 million budgeted this year and next for counter-drone technology, the minister said. The systems include sensors and jammers designed to disrupt hostile drone signals, with the capability to intercept or shoot them down if necessary. “It is an important signal that we are confronting hybrid threats,” Dobrindt said. “We are creating a clear mission to detect, intercept and, yes, also shoot down drones when necessary. We cannot accept that hybrid threats, including drones, become a danger to our security.” Dobrindt said Germany will procure systems from both German and Israeli manufacturers, with further purchases expected in the coming months. This week, Germany’s state interior ministers are also due to decide whether to establish a joint federal-state counter-drone center, bringing together federal and state police forces and the military to coordinate detection and response. Berlin’s new unit marks its most significant move so far toward a standing national counter-drone capability. German security agencies have tracked hundreds of suspicious drone flyovers this year, including near barracks, naval facilities and critical infrastructure. Officials warn that small, commercially available drones are increasingly deployed in Europe for espionage, probing defenses and hybrid operations. Some European governments have pointed the finger of blame at Russia, but so far proof is lacking. Airports across Europe have also been forced to close thanks to overflying drones. Last month, the U.K., France and Germany sent staff and equipment to help Belgium counter drone incursions around sensitive facilities. Many countries are trying to figure out how to deal with the drones in a safe and legal way, as shooting them down could endanger people on the ground.

Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, the author of the award-winning “Goodbye Globalization” and a regular columnist for POLITICO. Over the past two years, state-linked Russian hackers have repeatedly attacked Liverpool City Council — and it’s not because the Kremlin harbors a particular dislike toward the port city in northern England. Rather, these attacks are part of a strategy to hit cities, governments and businesses with large financial losses, and they strike far beyond cyberspace. In the Gulf of Finland, for example, the damage caused to undersea cables by the Eagle S shadow vessel in December incurred costs adding up to tens of millions of euros — and that’s just one incident. Russia has attacked shopping malls, airports, logistics companies and airlines, and these disruptions have all had one thing in common: They have a great cost to the targeted companies and their insurers. One can’t help but feel sorry for Liverpool City Council. In addition to looking after the city’s half-million or so residents, it also has to keep fighting Russia’s cyber gangs who, according to a recent report, have been attacking ceaselessly: “We have experienced many attacks from this group and their allies using their Distributed Botnet over the last two years,” the report noted, referring to the hacktivist group NoName057(16), which has been linked to the Russian state. “[Denial of Service attacks] for monetary or political reasons is a widespread risk for any company with a web presence or that relies on internet-based systems.” Indeed. Over the past decades, state-linked Russian hackers have targeted all manner of European municipalities, government agencies and businesses. This includes the 2017 NotPetya attack, which brought down “four hospitals in Kiev alone, six power companies, two airports, more than 22 Ukrainian banks, ATMs and card payment systems in retailers and transport, and practically every federal agency,” as well as a string of multinationals, causing staggering losses of around $10 billion. More recently, Russia has taken to targeting organizations and businesses in other ways as well. There have been arson attacks, including one involving Poland’s largest shopping mall that Prime Minister Donald Tusk subsequently said was definitively “ordered by Russian special services.” There have been parcel bombs delivered to DHL; fast-growing drone activity reported around European defense manufacturing facilities; and a string of suspicious incidents damaging or severing undersea cables and even a pipeline. The costly list goes on: Due to drone incursions into restricted airspace, Danish and German airports have been forced to temporarily close, diverting or cancelling dozens of flights. Russia’s GPS jamming and spoofing are affecting a large percentage of commercial flights all around the Baltic Sea. In the Red Sea, Houthi attacks are causing most ships owned by or flagged in Western countries to redirect along the much longer Cape of Good Hope route, which adds costs. The Houthis are not Russia, but Russia (and China) could easily aid Western efforts to stop these attacks — yet they don’t. They simply enjoy the enormous privilege of having their vessels sail through unassailed. The organizations and companies hit by Russia have so far managed to avert calamitous harm. But these attacks are so dangerous and reckless that people will, sooner or later, lose their lives. There have been arson attacks, including one involving Poland’s largest shopping mall that Prime Minister Donald Tusk subsequently said was definitively “ordered by Russian special services.” | Aleksander Kalka/Getty Images What’s more, their targets will continue losing a lot of money. The repairs of a subsea data cable alone typically costs up to a couple million euros. The owners of EstLink 2 — the undersea power cable hit by the Eagle S— incurred losses of nearly €60 million. Closing an airport for several hours is also incredibly expensive, as is cancelling or diverting flights. To be sure, most companies have insurance to cover them against cyber attacks or similar harm, but insurance is only viable if the harm is occasional. If it becomes systematic, underwriters can no longer afford to take on the risk — or they have to significantly increase their premiums. And there’s the kicker: An interested actor can make disruption systematic. That is, in fact, what Russia is doing. It is draining our resources, making it increasingly costly to be a business based in a Western country, or even a city council or government authority, for that matter. This is terrifying — and not just for the companies that may be hit. But while Russia appears far beyond the reach of any possible efforts to convince it to listen to its better angels, we can still put up a steely front. The armed forces put up the literal steel, of course, but businesses and civilian organizations can practice and prepare for any attacks that Russia, or other hostile countries, could decide to launch against them. Such preparation would limit the possible harm such attacks can lead to. It begs the question, if an attack causes minimal disruption, then what’s the point of instigating it in the first place? That’s why government-led gray-zone exercises that involve the private sector are so important. I’ve been proposing them for several years now, and for every month that passes, they become even more essential. Like the military, we shouldn’t just conduct these exercises — we should tell the whole world we’re doing so too. Demonstrating we’re ready could help dissuade sinister actors who believe they can empty our coffers. And it has a side benefit too: It helps companies show their customers and investors that they can, indeed, weather whatever Russia may dream up.

BRUSSELS — CIA Director John Ratcliffe made a low-key stop in Brussels this week, meeting top EU foreign and intelligence officials to deliver a not-so-subtle message: You can still trust us. Ratcliffe met with the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, as well as senior officials from the EU Intelligence and Situation Center (INTCEN) and the EU Military Staff Intelligence Directorate (EUMS), according to three people with knowledge of the meeting. The goal, two officials said, was to steady nerves and reaffirm Washington’s commitment to intelligence-sharing — as some European capitals grow uneasy about the direction of U.S. foreign policy under President Donald Trump. The Trump administration’s erratic policy shifts on Ukraine — such as abruptly halting the sharing of battlefield intelligence with Kyiv last March — and its push to politicize intelligence by appointing Trump loyalists have shaken European confidence in Washington’s reliability. Ratcliffe, a former Republican congressman from Texas, built his reputation as one of Trump’s fiercest defenders on Capitol Hill — particularly during the first impeachment proceedings, when he used his perch on the House Intelligence Committee to attack the inquiry. Officially, Ratcliffe was in town to brief the North Atlantic Council, the political decision-making body of NATO, one diplomat said. But his side meeting with the bloc’s foreign policy arm, the EEAS, sent a clear signal: Langley wants to keep lines open. The expectation is that the meeting won’t be a one-off: “Should be regular from now on,” one official said. Ratcliffe and his EU counterparts also discussed shared challenges, including Russia, China and the Middle East. The diplomatic push comes at a sensitive moment. European services are working to bury decades of distrust to build a shared EU intelligence operation to counter Russian aggression while they rethink their intel-sharing arrangements with the U.S. The Dutch civil and military intelligence service told local paper De Volkskrant earlier this month that they’d halted some exchanges, citing political interference and human rights concerns.

Two Ukrainian nationals have been detained in Poland on suspicion of spying for a foreign intelligence service, authorities in Warsaw said Monday morning. Prosecutors handling the case allege that the pair, aged 32 and 34, gathered classified data on “soldiers of the Polish Armed Forces, critical infrastructure located on the territory of the Republic of Poland, including transport infrastructure providing logistical and military support to Ukraine,” the Polish counterintelligence agency ABW said in a statement. The ABW also said the suspects had installed monitoring devices near key facilities to enable “covert tracking of critical infrastructure.” They received payments for their work, the ABW also said. Poland has been on high alert for cases of foreign espionage and sabotage both on the ground and in cyberspace, which authorities have linked directly to Russia or its close ally Belarus.  The arrests, which took place on Oct. 14 in the southern Polish city of Katowice, are part of  an espionage probe overseen by prosecutors and based on information from the Military Counterintelligence Service SKW.  The two Ukrainian nationals were charged with readiness to work for a foreign intelligence service and collecting sensitive information, a crime subject to imprisonment from six months to eight years.  Other recent incidents in Poland involved an alleged Belarusian refugee, who Poland says was an operative for Russia, setting fire to a shopping mall near Warsaw; and an alleged attempt that is being investigated to sabotage a railway station by leaving an unmarked railcar on tracks used by passenger trains.