Warsaw, Poland — When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, reporters from around the world rushed to the Polish-Ukrainian border to cover the exodus of refugees fleeing Russian bombs.
Among them was Pablo González, a freelance journalist from Spain who had been living in Poland since 2019 and worked for the Spanish news agency EFE, Voice of America and other media. Reporters from Warsaw knew him as an outgoing colleague who liked to drink beer and sing karaoke until the early hours.
Two and a half years later, he was sent to Moscow as part of a prisoner exchange, leaving behind both mysteries about who he really was and concerns about the way Poland had handled a case in which he was accused of being a Russian agent.
In the early days of the war, González reported for television audiences in Spain, against the backdrop of refugees arriving at the train station in the Polish border town of Przemysl.
But less than a week after the war began, Polish security agents entered the room where he was staying and arrested him. They accused him of “participating in foreign intelligence activities against Poland” and said he was an agent of the GRU, the Russian military intelligence service.
Friends were stunned — and as Poland held González without trial for months that turned into years, some grew skeptical and organized protests in Spain to demand his release. Authorities never detailed the charges.
But on Thursday night, the muscular, bald-headed, bearded 42-year-old was welcomed home by President Vladimir Putin after being released in the largest prisoner exchange since the Soviet era.
His participation in the deal appears to confirm suspicions that González was a Russian agent posing as a journalist.
Born Pavel Rubtsov in 1982 in then Soviet Moscow, González moved to Spain at the age of 9 with his Spanish mother, where he became a citizen and took the Spanish name Pablo González Yagüe. He went into journalism, working for the media Público, La Sexta and Gara, a Basque nationalist newspaper.
It is not clear what prompted Poland to arrest him. The investigation remains secret, and a secret service spokesman told The Associated Press he could not comment beyond what was in a brief statement. Poland has been on high alert after a series of arrests of suspected espionage and sabotage in what authorities see as hybrid warfare by Russia and Belarus against the West.
Polish security services said Poland included him in the deal because of the close Polish-US alliance and “common security interests.” In their statement, they said that “Pavel Rubtsov, a GRU officer arrested in Poland in 2022, had carried out intelligence tasks in Europe.”
The head of Britain’s MI6 service, Sir Richard Moore, said at the Aspen Security Forum in 2022 that González was an “illegal” who was arrested in Poland after “posing as a Spanish journalist.”
“He was trying to get into Ukraine to be part of their destabilizing efforts there,” Moore said.
Another clue to his activities came from the independent Russian news agency Agentstvo, which reported that in 2016 Rubtsov befriended and spied on Zhanna Nemtsovathe daughter of the Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsovwho was murdered in Moscow in 2015.
Journalists from Poland who knew González said he used his base in Poland to travel to former Soviet countries, including Ukraine and Georgia. He had a permit to operate a drone and used it to film Auschwitz-Birkenau from the air for reporting on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the extermination camp for 2020.
Voice of America, a US government-funded organization, confirmed that he worked for them briefly, but they have since removed all of his work from their website.
“Pablo González contributed to a few VOA stories as a freelancer over a relatively short period of time, beginning in late 2020,” spokesperson Emily Webb said in response to an emailed query. “As a freelancer providing content to a number of media outlets, his services were arranged through a third-party company used by news organizations around the world.”
“At no time did he have access to VOA systems or VOA references,” Webb said. “As soon as VOA became aware of the allegations, we removed his material.”
Because Poland’s justice system was politicized under a populist government that ruled in 2015-23, some activists worried about whether his rights were being respected. Reporters Without Borders was among the groups calling for him to be tried or released.
The group maintains that he should not have been held for so long without trial. “You are innocent until a trial proves you guilty,” Alfonso Bauluz, the head of the group’s office in Spain, told the AP on Friday. He expressed frustration at the silence surrounding the case and the fact that there appears to be no trial at all, and said Poland has not presented the evidence it has against him.
But the group also expects González to make a statement now that he is free.
Jaap Arriens, a Dutch video journalist living in Warsaw, went out with the man he knew as Pablo in Warsaw and Kiev, and also in Przemyśl, shortly before his arrest.
Arriens described him as a friendly, funny man with a macho appearance and a chest full of tattoos that he once showed in a bar.
González fit in for the most part, but seemed better off than the average freelance journalist. He always seemed to have the latest and most expensive phones and computers, and was working on the Polish-Ukrainian border with the latest 14-inch MacBook Pro. He had plenty of money to spend in bars.
He remembers González once saying, “Life is good, life is almost too good.”
“And I was like, ‘Man, freelance life is never good. What are you talking about?’ I don’t know any freelancer who talks like that.”
González, whose grandfather emigrated from Spain to the Soviet Union as a child during the Spanish Civil War, was known as a Basque nationalist with ties to the region’s independence movement.
Russia is suspected of support for separatist movements in Spain and elsewhere in an attempt to destabilize Europe.
González’s wife in Spain advocated for him during his detention in Poland, even though they were not living together at the time of his arrest.
In recent years, supporters of the suspect have set up an account on Twitter, now X, to advocate for his release.
When he was sent to Moscow on Thursday, @FreePabloGonzález account tweeted: “This is our last tweet: Pablo is finally free. Infinite thanks to everyone.”
Those who have followed the case are now waiting for González’s next steps.
He has Spanish nationality — and the right to return to the European Union. His wife was quoted in Spanish media as saying she hopes he can return to Spain.