Czech, Hungarian, and Romanian authorities have dismantled a Belarusian spy network in a crackdown leading to an arrest and an expulsion, the Czech intelligence service said Monday.
As part of the bust, a Belarusian diplomat with ties to the network has been expelled from the Czech Republic, the country’s intelligence service (BIS) said in a statement.
The spy network was set up by the Belarusian intelligence service KGB and operated “in several European countries,” it added.
“A joint team of European intelligence officers identified KGB employees and collaborators… including a former deputy head of the Moldovan intelligence service SIS,” it said in a statement.
The man, a Moldovan national according to BIS spokesman Ladislav Sticha, is accused of passing classified information to the KGB for money from 2024 onward.
He was arrested in Romania on Monday, said the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (Eurojust), supervising the crackdown.
Diplomacy defends us. We declared a Belarusian diplomat working for the intelligence services persona non grata. We will not tolerate the abuse of diplomatic cover for espionage. pic.twitter.com/XmDpPVVHXJ
— Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs (@CzechMFA) September 8, 2025
BIS spokesman Sticha told AFP the Belarusian diplomat and the Moldovan did not cooperate directly with each other.
Eurojust said the Moldovan suspect was being “investigated for (committing) the crime of treason by way of transmitting state secrets on a continuous basis.”
“The suspect had two meetings in 2024 and 2025 in Budapest, Hungary with intelligence officers from the State Security Committee of Belarus (KGB),” it added.
Belarus led by authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko is an ally of Russia, backing its invasion of neighboring Ukraine that started in February 2022.
Eurojust hailed “the importance of transnational cooperation in investigating such malicious activities.”
Both Eurojust and BIS said Belarus managed to build the spy network owing to the freedom of movement across Europe.
“To combat these hostile activities in Europe with success, we need to restrict the movement of accredited diplomats from Russia and Belarus in the (European open-border) Schengen area,” said BIS director Michal Koudelka.
Earlier this year, Czech authorities expelled Belarusian journalist Natallia Sudliankova, accusing her of working for Russian secret services.
Sudliankova wrote articles both in Russia’s favor and “undermining public trust in the legitimacy of EU sanctions” imposed on Russians after the Ukraine invasion, BIS said in its annual report.
