The Russian political exile and his wife were fighting. This was painfully clear to their roommate, who could hear them through the thin walls of the dormitory they shared in the southern Polish city of Sosnowiec.
In the heat of the couple’s argument on April 21, 2023, the wife sent a text message to the roommate, a fellow Russian exile, he said.
“Do you know that Igor has been reporting on you and another guy to the F.S.B.?” she wrote, according to the fellow exile, Danila Buzanov.
The F.S.B. is the Russian domestic security agency, the main successor to the K.G.B. Irina Rogova, the wife of Igor Rogov, a little-known opposition activist who had left Russia days after Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, was accusing her husband of spying on other exiles for the Russian government.
She made the same accusation in a group message to friends. As rumors spread, Mr. Rogov and Ms. Rogova tried to brush it off, saying she had made an unfortunate joke while they were going through a divorce.
Now, more than two years later, Mr. Rogov sits in a Polish jail, charged with espionage and with participating in a bombing plot. His wife has also been charged with spying and with being an accessory.
A lawyer for Mr. Rogov declined to discuss details of the case, saying that its files were not yet public. It is unclear whether Mr. Rogov has entered a plea. A preliminary hearing in the case is scheduled for Monday.
European nations have exposed several Russian spies since the start of the war in Ukraine. If the Polish accusations against Mr. Rogov are true, he would be the first to have been planted within the ranks of Kremlin opponents and then given shelter in Europe.
Mr. Rogov, 29, was arrested in July 2024 after, prosecutors say, an explosives-filled parcel that had been addressed to him was found in a warehouse in central Poland. In their indictment, the prosecutors say that during their investigation into the package they established that Mr. Rogov had cooperated with the F.S.B.
In addition to spying, he was accused of participating in a Russian plot to send incendiary packages on flights around Europe. Fires last year at shipping hubs in Britain and Germany were linked to the alleged plot, part of a broader Russian campaign of hybrid attacks against Europe that Western officials say have included drone incursions, cyberwarfare and acts of sabotage.
Friends said they could scarcely imagine Mr. Rogov as the cloak-and-dagger character that the Polish indictment makes him out to be. An impressionable young man lured into low-level spying? Perhaps. But an attempted bomber? Many say it cannot be true.
“Knowing Igor, I can totally see him getting mixed up in some trouble,” said Artyom Vazhenkov, a Russian activist who knew him. “But plotting a terrorist attack in Poland — this is a nightmare. If he indeed was this James Bond figure all along, then I don’t know who to trust anymore.”
The Activist
In his years as an opposition activist, Mr. Rogov entered the national spotlight only once, when he was shown on television writhing in pain on the ground outside a police station in Belarus in August 2020.
He and Mr. Vazhenkov had traveled there to monitor a presidential election, only to be swept up in a crackdown against Belarusians protesting the fraud-tainted victory of President Aleskandr G. Lukashenko.
The two men, both members of the opposition group Open Russia, were released without charges and deported to Russia.
When he returned, Mr. Rogov “was all black and blue from the beatings,” said Andrei Pivovarov, the executive director of Open Russia at the time.
A few weeks later, Mr. Rogov, who had barely known Mr. Vazhenkov before they survived detention together in Belarus, invited him to his hometown for his wedding. Mr. Rogov, known to his friends as perky and good-natured, was marrying his high school sweetheart, Irina.
The following summer, Russia held what proved to be its last nationwide election before the invasion of Ukraine. Encouraged by Open Russia, Mr. Rogov ran for a seat in the legislature of the city of Saransk, his hometown, about 400 miles southeast of Moscow.
Milya Kashapova, who managed his campaign, was convinced that Mr. Rogov was being watched by the F.S.B. Unmarked cars followed them on campaign stops, she said. Mr. Rogov publicly complained about the harassment.
“At some point, Igor came out to those guys and said, ‘Let’s get tea,’ and we never saw them again,” she said.
Five months after Mr. Rogov’s failed run for office, Russia invaded Ukraine. He and his wife put in motion a plan they had come up with before the war, as the clouds over the Russian opposition movement began to darken.
Mr. Rogov had applied for a scholarship to study computer science in Poland. The couple had been hesitant about going. But “the war changed everything,” Ms. Kashapova said. “They took a few days to pack and left.”
The Exile
Some Russian opposition figures who go into exile are prominent enough to stay active through crowdfunding. Mr. Rogov was not one of them.
After arriving in Poland, he and his wife seemingly eschewed politics. They focused on learning a new language and building a life abroad from scratch.
Mr. Rogov’s friends say they had no suspicions about him at the time. But looking back, some things stand out: his constant requests for help with payments sent from Russia, his lack of interest in getting a job and his unquenchable thirst for socializing, especially with the opposition crowd.
“He was always up for meeting with anyone, absolutely anyone,” Mr. Buzanov, the roommate, said.
Mr. Rogov’s finances were also a mystery, Mr. Buzanov said. Mr. Rogov would tell friends that he was broke but later would take trips abroad.
Mr. Buzanov, who was studying in Poland on the same program as Mr. Rogov and his wife, had to get part-time jobs. He could not make sense of how the couple were getting by on their meager scholarships. Mr. Rogov said he was living off money he got from selling his car in Russia, Mr. Buzanov said.
In 2023, Mr. Rogov started asking friends to help move small sums of money out of Russia.
Maxim Kondratyev, who was then married to Mr. Rogov’s former campaign manager, Ms. Kashapova, said he accepted two payments of 30,000 rubles ($380) on the activist’s behalf into his Russian bank account. He then paid the equivalent to Mr. Rogov, he said.
Such requests are not uncommon among Russians abroad, given restrictions on moving money from Russia to Europe. But when Mr. Rogov asked for a third transfer, Mr. Kondratyev became suspicious and refused, he said.
Several other people also helped Mr. Rogov get cash out of Russia, said Mr. Kondratyev, who now refers to the transfers as “Igor’s F.S.B. salary.”
The Suspect
On the spring day when Ms. Rogova sent her text message to Mr. Buzanov, she sent a similar group message to friends saying that Mr. Rogov’s work as an opposition activist had been a fiction.
In a message dated April 21, 2023, and viewed by The New York Times, she wrote that her husband had been recruited by the F.S.B. while a student in Russia.
“All of this political activity from the start,” she wrote, was “solely aimed at getting a coin of gold in the pocket” or a pat on the back. She added that Mr. Rogov had eventually been asked to report on the inner workings of the Russian opposition movement.
Friends were “in utter shock,” Ms. Kashapova said.
Mr. Buzanov said Ms. Rogova quickly deleted the direct message she had sent to him. He said he then confronted Mr. Rogov, who admitted to spying for the F.S.B. but claimed to have stopped years ago, Mr. Buzanov said.
Separately, Mr. Rogov messaged friends to say that he and his wife were getting divorced and that she had “made an unfortunate joke.”
After their split, Ms. Rogova moved out and got a job at a beauty salon. Mr. Rogov remained at the dorm, where he lived with Mr. Buzanov.
In July 2024, a visibly shaken janitor stopped Mr. Buzanov one morning at the dorm’s gate. The police had come to ask for Mr. Rogov in connection with a parcel found at a warehouse in central Poland, Mr. Buzanov said.
Mr. Rogov was on vacation at the time in Montenegro. Mr. Buzanov texted Mr. Rogov, who said he knew nothing about the package, Mr. Buzanov said.
Mr. Rogov was arrested upon his return to Poland. It is not clear why he would have gone back if he knew that the Polish authorities were pursuing him.
Ms. Rogova sent a group message to friends calling the accusations a lie. The authorities later accused her of helping her husband pass information to the F.S.B.
Writing from jail, Mr. Rogov told Mr. Buzanov in a letter viewed by The Times that he did not “fully understand what’s going on” with his case.
“I’m afraid of what will happen next when I hopefully get out one day,” Mr. Rogov wrote.
Anatol Magdziarz contributed reporting from Warsaw.
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