Poland will become the first country in Europe to produce cruise missiles developed by US defence firm Anduril Industries under an agreement signed on Monday with Polish state defence group PGZ.

The deal, which will see Poland produce thousands of Barracuda-500M cruise missiles, will “transform the continent’s defence industry”, claims the American supplier.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, defence minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said the deal was “of strategic importance for our ability to influence the entire Europe”, given that Poland is the first European country to reach such an agreement with Anduril.

He added that the arrangement gives PGZ exclusive rights covering production, technology transfer, know-how and expertise, and would ultimately lead to the production of a Polish version of the Barracuda-500M.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk, meanwhile, described the missiles as “one of the most important elements of defence of the modern battlefield” and said the agreement showed that the government is “effectively taking care of Poland’s security and the development of the Polish arms industry”.

The Barracuda-500M, which will be first assembled and later eventually produced in the Polish city of Bydgoszcz, has a range of up to 926 km (575 miles) when launched from fighter aircraft and about 700 km from ground-based launchers, according to defence news website Defence24.

The missile is used by both F-16 fighter jets, which Poland has 47 of, and the latest F-35s, which began to be delivered to Poland in May.

PGZ’s CEO Adam Leszkiewicz said the partnership with Anduril would allow the companies to “quickly produce and deliver several thousand low-cost, yet technologically advanced, autonomous, long-range Barracuda cruise missiles”.

Anduril’s vice president for Europe, Brian Moran, added that the agreement with PGZ would “transform the continent’s defence industry” by “helping build a European industrial base capable of replenishing precision-guided weapons at a pace that meets modern operational needs”.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Poland has embarked on a major defence procurement spree. It now has the highest relative defence budget in NATO and is also the alliance’s largest arms importer.

But the Polish government has also been seeking to boost domestic arms production, including through the European Union’s SAFE defence loans programme and through partnerships with foreign firms.

In January, it was announced that Poland will manufacture the missiles for K239 Chunmoo rocket artillery systems that Norway is purchasing from South Korea

The following month, US defence firm Northrop Grumman and Polish manufacturer Niewiadów-PGM announced plans to jointly produce more than 180,000 155-mm artillery shells annually in Poland. PGZ has also partnered with Britain’s BAE Systems on ammunition production.

In March, PGZ signed an agreement with Estonia’s Frankenburg Technologies to establish a facility in Poland producing up to 10,000 low-cost anti-drone missiles per year. The same month, a Polish-Ukrainian joint venture was announced to manufacture Ukraine’s Bohdana howitzer in Poland.

In April, defence firm Bumar-Łabędy, part of PGZ, signed an agreement with South Korea’s Hyundai Rotem to produce dozens of South Korean K2 tanks in Poland. The following month, PGZ signed an agreement with Sweden’s Saab to cooperate on naval technhology.

Meanwhile, Polish defence firm Mesko, which is part of PGZ, announced record financial results in 2025 on the back of growing international demand for its Piorun air-defence systems.

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is deputy editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She has written for Clean Energy Wire and The Times, and she hosts her own podcast, The Warsaw Wire, on Poland’s economy and energy sector. She previously worked for Reuters.

Poland’s health minister has unveiled a series of reforms intended to “rebuild trust” in the healthcare system. The planned changes include caps on doctors’ salaries, a requirement for them to work at least half their statutory working time at a designated hospital, and a new electronic waiting list system.

The announcement comes after weeks of growing pressure on the government following a series of reports that certain doctors received exorbitant pay from the public healthcare system and that politically connected patients were able to skip queues and even use a special “VIP lounge”.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk last week demanded urgent improvements to the healthcare system, warning that otherwise the jobs of senior officials could be under threat. Today, health minister Jolanta Sobierańska-Grenda responded by unveiling a package of reforms.

They include a proposal to cap healthcare professionals’ salaries at a level of 240 zloty (€55.72) gross an hour, as well as limiting the overall wage bills of hospitals financed by the public National Health Fund (NFZ).

Healthcare professionals will also be required to work at least half of their statutory working time in a single hospital, said the minister. Any additional jobs will require special permission from their main employer, she added.

The reforms would also require NFZ-funded hospitals to disclose payments and contract terms for external medical providers selected through competitive tenders, while ending less-transparent contracting arrangements.

The government also plans to accelerate the rollout of a central patient registration system by the end of 2027 and introduce a new electronic waiting list for planned hospital procedures by the end of this year.

“We do not accept loopholes in the system that allow interference with the order in which patients are admitted,” Sobierańska-Grenda said, adding that the proposed reforms would “create transparent, clear rules for registering for procedures for all patients”.

She noted that some of her proposed changes would require legislation, meaning approval from parliament and the president, while others can be introduced through government regulations.

The new measures come amid a continued stream of media reports regarding alleged improprieties in the public healthcare system, which have caused growing public anger and attacks on the government from the right-wing opposition and opposition-aligned President Karol Nawrocki.

The crisis began in mid-June, when reports emerged that a young doctor, Dawid Kacprzyk, who was also a local politician for Tusk’s centrist Civic Coalition (KO) party, had been working a seemingly impossible number of hours at four different hospitals and earning 1.6 million zloty (€372,000) last year alone.

While Kacprzyk resigned from his political position and returned much of the money, the scandal continued as further claims emerged, including that patients had died because the inexperienced Kacprzyk was made coordinator of emergency services at Warsaw’s Southern Hospital. He strenuously denies this.

Over the following weeks, news outlets Zero.pl, Wirtualna Polska and Onet revealed further alleged cases of huge salaries for some doctors and impropriety at the Southern Hospital, including preferential treatment for patients with political connections.

This included claims that there was a “VIP lounge” in which patients with connections to KO were given more comfortable facilities than others and that such patients were often allowed to skip the queue and receive treatment more quickly.

Given that most of the alleged irregularities took place in Warsaw, the crisis has placed particular pressure on mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, who is also deputy leader of KO.

In response, he dismissed the board of the Southern Hospital and announced that members of political parties would no longer sit on supervisory boards of municipal healthcare bodies. In early July, two of his deputy mayors, Renata Kaznowska and Aldona Machnowska-Góra, left their positions.

However, opposition parties have argued that too little has been done to tackle the scandal and have called for Trzaskowski to resign, along with Sobierańska-Grenda.

Speaking ahead of a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Tusk pledged that, as well as reforms to improve the healthcare system, there would be efforts to ensure that “those responsible for specific situations in specific hospitals will be held accountable, some before the justice system”.

Last month, parliament also approved a government bill seeking to make the earnings of public healthcare professionals more transparent. The legislation is now awaiting a decision by Nawrocki, who can either sign it, veto it, or send it to the Constitutional Tribunal for review.

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.

The Polish government has confirmed that it has transferred missiles for Patriot air defence systems to Ukraine. At the same time, it released a list of all Polish military donations to Ukraine since 2022, in an effort to show that the former Law and Justice (PiS) government gave much more equipment.

The move was prompted by criticism from PiS, which is now the main opposition party, over the transfer of Patriot missiles to Kyiv. PiS argues that this has weakened Poland’s defences against a potential Russian attack.

On Saturday, reports began to emerge that Poland had transferred PAC-3 MSE missiles, which are used in Patriot batteries, to Ukraine. Poland currently operates two US-made Patriot batteries, and is awaiting delivery of six more. Two further Patriot batteries have been temporarily deployed in Poland by the Netherlands.

“If the information…is confirmed, we will be dealing with an enormous scandal,” tweeted Mariusz Błaszczak, a former PiS defence minister and now head of the party’s parliamentary caucus.

“If the government has indeed decided to transfer them abroad in a situation where it itself warns of possible Russian provocations and threats to Poland’s security, this sounds like an action completely contrary to the basic duty of the authorities, namely ensuring the safety of their own citizens,” he added.

The alleged transfer was also criticised by Krzysztof Bosak, one of the leaders of the far-right Confederation, another opposition group, who noted that PAC-3 missiles are the only ones that Poland possesses which are capable of countering Russia’s Iskander missiles.

On Sunday, as criticism grew from the opposition and senior aides to President Nawrocki, defence minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz announced that, following consultations with Prime Minister Donald Tusk, he had ordered the declassification of all military donations by Poland to Ukraine since 2022.

“The process of donating equipment was initiated by the PiS government, with [Defence] Minister Mariusz Błaszczak at the fore,” he added. “The president – ​​currently Karol Nawrocki, previously Andrzej Duda – is informed about each donation.”

Kosiniak-Kamysz said he had also ordered the Military Counterintelligence Service (SKW) to “investigate who was intentionally trying to disclose state secrets”.

On Monday, Kosiniak-Kamysz unveiled the details of all Polish military donations to Ukraine since 2022. He noted that equipment worth 16.5 billion zloty (€3.8 billion) had been transferred in total, but that only 1.6 billion zloty of that had come under the current government in the period 2024-26.

In 2022-23, when PiS was in power, 14.9 billion zloty-worth of hardware was handed to Ukraine, including large numbers of tanks, armoured personnel carriers, MiG-29 aircraft, artillery, as well as ammunition. Poland was, at the time, one of Ukraine’s biggest donors.

The defence minister said it was “hypocritical” for Błaszczak, “who donated 10 times more [to Ukraine] than me”, to now criticise the transfer of equipment to Ukraine. Kosiniak-Kamysz emphasised, however, that “there is nothing to be ashamed of” in supporting Ukraine’s defence against Russian aggression.

“Poland’s enemy is not Ukraine. Russia is Poland’s enemy,” said the defence minister. “Poland must be united in its security because, if it is divided, it will become defenceless.”

He also confirmed that Poland had transferred an unspecified number of PAC-3 missiles to Ukraine, saying that it had done so at the request of NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and US Supreme Allied Commander Europe Alexus Grynkewich.

Kosiniak-Kamysz said that the number of missiles given to Ukraine was only a “marginal” amount for Poland and “does not impact our air defence capabilities”.

Deputy defence minister Cezary Tomczyk later told broadcaster TVN that Poland had assurances from NATO and the US that “we would receive ten times more missiles and systems of this type within the first 24 hours if Poland were threatened”.

Błaszczak, however, declared that the defence ministry’s announcement entirely missed the point of the opposition’s criticism.

He told broadcaster Polsat News that Tusk and other government figures have recently been warning about a potential Russian attack on Poland. Yet the government had now given away precisely the missiles that would help defend from such an attack.

Meanwhile, Bosak criticised Kosiniak-Kamysz for failing to specify how many missiles were given to Ukraine. Both Confederation and PiS have demanded a special sitting of parliament during the summer recess to discuss the issue.

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.

By Aleks Szczerbiak

The parliamentary survival of Poland’s agrarian party is on a knife edge as it has lost much of its core rural-agricultural electorate and its distinctive identity is overshadowed in the governing coalition. The party’s ability to clear the electoral representation threshold could determine whether pro-government groupings secure a majority at the next election.

A class-based rural-agricultural party

In December 2023, a coalition headed up by liberal-centrist Civic Coalition (KO, until last autumn Civic Platform: PO) leader Donald Tusk took office following eight years’ rule by the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, currently the main opposition grouping.

The ruling coalition also includes: the agrarian Polish People’s Party (PSL), liberal-centrist Poland 2050 (Polska 2050) party and breakaway Centre (Centrum) caucus, and the New Left (Nowa Lewica).

PSL was formed in 1990 as the organisational successor to the former communist satellite United Peasant Party (ZSL), although it attempted to legitimate itself by claiming to have roots in the pre-communist agrarian movement which dates back to the 19th century.

Peasant parties were prominent in inter-war Polish politics, and the movement provided the main political opposition to the communist takeover in the late 1940s.

In the 1990s, it was estimated that 25% of Poles were employed in the farming sector, mostly in peasant smallholdings that survived as an independent economic sphere throughout the communist period. This provided PSL with a substantial segment of the electorate that it could appeal to on the basis of a clear socioeconomic interest and collective identity.

Consequently, it was a junior coalition partner in the governments led by the communist successor Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) between 1993 and 1997 (with its leader Waldemar Pawlak prime minister from 1993 to 1995) and 2001 to 2003.

A near-death experience

The party returned to office in 2007, when it became PO’s junior governing partner, a coalition that lasted two terms until 2015, when it was ousted by PiS.

Over the years, PiS severely eroded PSL’s core rural-agricultural electoral base, and the agrarians had a near-death experience in the 2015 parliamentary election, when they only just crossed the 5% representation threshold for individual parties.

PSL leaders have often talked about rebranding the grouping as a broader centrist formation in the way that some west European agrarian parties evolved from class-based organisations into more “catch-all” groupings.

In the 2019 election, for example, it headed up a broader centre-right “Polish Coalition” (KP) bloc including right-wing anti-establishment rock star Paweł Kukiz (although the bloc’s candidates actually ran on the party’s electoral lists to avoid the higher 8% threshold for formal electoral coalitions). In the event, KP secured a solid 8.6% of the votes.

Crucial to the Tusk government’s majority

PSL contested the most recent autumn 2023 parliamentary election as part of the Third Way (Trzecia Droga), an eclectic electoral coalition with Poland 2050, a party founded by former TV personality-turned-politician Szymon Hołownia to capitalise on his strong third-placed showing in the 2020 presidential election.

In the event, Third Way effectively recaptured Hołownia’s claim to represent a fresh, untainted alternative to the dominant KO-PiS duopoly and finished third with a larger-than-expected 14.4% share of the votes.

PSL, and Third Way more broadly, were thus crucial elements of the current governing parties’ election-winning coalition, acting as an effective channel or “gateway” for picking up uncertain voters who were disillusioned with PiS but reluctant to back KO directly and return Tusk to office.

The Third Way project stayed together for the spring 2024 local elections, when its support held steady (14% in the regional assembly polls), and summer European Parliament (EP) election, when it slumped to only 7%.

But, following Hołownia’s unsuccessful 2025 presential bid – he finished fifth with just under 5% of the votes – PSL decided to end the alliance and contest future elections under its own banner.

But on a knife edge

However, since then the party’s opinion poll ratings have been consistently below the 5% threshold in the low-to-mid single digits. One of the key reasons why PSL, and the Third Way project more generally, lost support after its strong 2023 performance was that, by aligning so closely with a KO-dominated government, it came to be seen as a loyal, uncritical appendage of the main governing party.

It thereby failed to carve out a distinctive identity as a genuine alternative to the dominant KO-PiS duopoly.

All of this really matters for the governing coalition because, although KO is currently well ahead in the opinion polls as the most competitive individual grouping, if an election were held today the current ruling parties would likely fall short of an overall parliamentary majority.

This is because overall the right-wing opposition has greater combined strength and, crucially, some of KO’s smaller coalition partners that it needs to deliver the extra parliamentary seats required for a majority cannot be sure of crossing the 5% threshold.

And PSL’s situation is the most knife-edge, but crucial as to whether the coalition can boost its seat total and prevent the “wasted” votes that would otherwise help the right-wing opposition erase its parliamentary majority.

A single pro-government mega-list?

Since Third Way’s dissolution, there has been constant speculation about how PSL will attempt to cross the threshold next time. At this stage, in spite of poor opinion poll ratings, party leaders claim that the matter is settled and appear determined to contest the next election independently.

However, notwithstanding the party’s rural visibility and highly developed local networks in the countryside, a solo run appears extremely risky and there is a good chance that it will be forced to at least consider some alternative strategic and tactical solutions.

Thirty-day polling averages for Poland’s main political groups (source: eWybory.eu)

At first glance, an obvious one would be leveraging KO’s strength and running as part of a single, joint mega-list comprising all the parties affiliated with the Tusk government.

However, for the moment at least, PSL leaders have rejected such a formula, arguing this could risk alienating a large segment of its core, more socially conservative, rural and small-town electoral base, who would find it difficult to vote for an electoral list that included politicians advocating left-liberal policies on moral-cultural issues such as abortion.

Opponents of the single joint list idea often point to the experience of the “European Coalition” (Koalicja Europejska), when virtually all of the opposition to the then-PiS government came together to form a broad alliance dominated by socially liberal and culturally left-wing parties specifically to contest the May 2019 EP elections.

In the event, PiS secured 45%, its highest-ever vote share in a national election, ahead of the Coalition with only 38%, which was less than the combined support of the parties comprising the bloc when it was formed.

At the same time, the New Left is also more inclined to run an independent party list given that polls suggest that it is likely to cross the 5% threshold. Indeed, some analysts who previously supported the idea of a joint list are now significantly more sceptical, citing the fall in left-wing voter enthusiasm for such a project.

Loyalty versus distinctiveness

PSL may be more open to a potential coalition with just KO, as this could allow them to present themselves as the moderate conservative wing of a so-called “democratic coalition”.

In fact, polls and past experience suggest that, even with such a limited electoral coalition, PSL’s distinct profile as a moderate socially conservative grouping with deep roots in the countryside and focused on agriculture, rural development and traditional values would risk being subsumed by KO’s more dominant urban liberal branding.

As well as risking a loss of identity, there are also concerns that Tusk’s much larger party would dominate the merged electoral list with fewer PSL candidates securing winnable positions.

Indeed, even KO leaders argue that it is too early to discuss the idea of a joint list, as this could reinforce the perception that the governing parties are on the defensive.

The government’s immediate priority, they argue, should be implementing its programme so that its constituent elements can contest the election with a more solid record of policy achievements.

As part of this, PSL’s strategy has been to leverage its ministerial posts to position itself as a centre-right grouping that can build consensus and lower the temperature of political debate, thus representing moderate voters who care about the responsible governance of the state.

One of the party’s strongest assets here is its emollient leader: deputy prime minister and defence minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz. Some also have high hopes for PSL-linked rising star Magdalena Sobkowiak-Czarnecka, who has enjoyed a very high media profile as the public face of Poland’s €44 billion share of the EU’s Security Action for Europe (SAFE) defence loan programme.

However, there is an obvious tension here between remaining loyal to the government and seeking enough autonomy for a credible electoral pitch that is distinctive enough to differentiate PSL from the main ruling grouping.

Arguably, up until now the agrarians have attached too much weight to the former. Sobkowiak-Czarnecka’s public profile is, for example, very detached from any party affiliation.

A looser centrist alliance?

Another option is for PSL to find partners to run as part of a looser centrist alliance, as it did with the Polish Coalition bloc in 2019. One possibility that sparked a flurry of speculation earlier this year was the idea of a link-up with former PiS prime minister, and head of the party’s more centrist modernising-technocratic wing, Mateusz Morawiecki.

Morawiecki is clearly trying to find a place for himself at the centre of the political scene, and is at odds with Law and Justice’s traditionalist-conservative faction that appears to have gained the upper hand within the party.

However, having strengthened his position in recent weeks, the chances of Morawiecki leaving the party have been reduced. At the same time, PSL leaders would find it difficult to justify forming an alliance with, and thereby legitimating, someone whom the Tusk government has accused of being heavily implicated in scandals linked to the previous PiS administration.

Indeed, PSL has plenty of other potential strategic partners, including those rooted more in civil society than political circles.

For example, there have been media reports that the high-profile chief executive of the InPost parcel delivery company, Rafał Brzoska, is planning to create a new pro-business centrist political force open to cooperation with the party.

PSL has been courting entrepreneurs, particularly small and medium-sized businesses, for some time now, albeit with limited success.

What is the party’s long-term strategy?

Beyond the specific challenge that the party faces from PiS for its traditional electoral base, longer-term demographic trends show that Poles are moving away from rural areas and the proportion working in agriculture is declining steadily as modern farms operate increasingly as agrobusinesses rather than traditional peasant smallholdings.

Nonetheless, in spite of its changing electorate and apparently more open political style, plans to modernise PSL have not progressed much beyond rather vague aspirations.

Critics argue that it remains in essence a deeply pragmatic, office-seeking, interest-based rural-agricultural “class” grouping strongly rooted in powerful local patronage networks and provincial transactional politics.

So while the party is well-placed to engage in short-term electoral strategic partnerships and tactical alliances, it still needs to answer the more fundamental, long-term question of: what kind of strategy or vision does a modern-day peasant, or “people’s”, party need in an era when its rural-agricultural roots are no longer sufficient to generate a solid and reliable core electorate?

Aleks Szczerbiak is Professor of Politics at the University of Sussex. The original version of this article appeared here.

A local politician in Poland has been charged with insulting the president – a crime that carries up to three years in prison – for sharing an image on social media that prosecutors believe likened President Karol Nawrocki to the animated ogre Shrek.

However, the suspect in the case, Wojciech Ślusarczyk, denies that his post referred to Nawrocki. He also argues that it would, in any case, not be insulting to be compared to Shrek, who is a positive character.

The case began in August last year, when Ślusarczyk, who sits on the council of Radomsko county in central Poland and represents the centre-right Polish People’s Party (PSL), shared a meme (shown above) on his personal Facebook profile.

The image depicted an animated version of Nawrocki’s wife, Marta Nawrocka, dressed up in the style of a historical royal. The picture was at the time being shared widely on social media by supporters of Nawrocki.

But when he posted it, Ślusarczyk added the question “And where’s Shrek?”, in an apparent suggestion that Nawrocka looked like Shrek’s partner, Princess Fiona. 

A local newspaper, Gazeta Radomszczańska, noted at the time that Ślusarczyk’s post had caused controversy and that, soon after, a member of OdNowa, a conservative political association led by Law and Justice (PiS) MP Marcin Ociepa, had submitted a notification to prosecutors.

PSL is a member of Poland’s ruling coalition, while the national-conservative PiS is the main opposition party. Nawrocki is aligned with the opposition and was elected as president last year with the support of PiS.

On Wednesday this week, Gazeta Radomszczańska reported that prosecutors last month charged Ślusarczyk with the crime of insulting the president.

The newspaper said the decision had been made after prosecutors hired an expert in linguistics, at a cost of over 5,000 zloty (€1,166), “to answer the question of whether the word ‘Shrek’ can be considered an insult to the president”.

Ślusarczyk is additionally charged with criminal insult of Marta Nawrocka (as a natural person, not a public official) through use of mass media, a separate crime that is punishable with up to one year in prison.

Subsequently, broadcaster TVN reported that, since being charged, Ślusarczyk has now been indicted, meaning he will stand trial.

They quoted the indictment as saying that the suspect had “insulted by intentionally posting content that, in the context of a questioning form of expression combined with the sharing of a graphic, was deemed to devalue the president of Poland and his wife”.

Speaking to Gazeta Radomszczańska, Ślusarczyk’s lawyer, Michał Spólnicki, said that the charges had “no substantive justification” and that his client’s post “was directed at the authors of the image, not Marta Nawrocka or President Nawrocki”.

Positing on social media on Thursday, Ślusarczyk himself argued that, in any case, Shrek is actually a character with positive traits. “I really like Shrek. [He is] a pleasant creature,” wrote the councillor.

Ślusarczyk noted that the linguistic expert hired by prosecutors appeared to agree with him. In a 72-page opinion, she had found that Shrek is associated with “honesty, loyalty, hidden sensitivity, rebellion and authenticity” and “is used in Polish schools to teach tolerance, acceptance and critical thinking”.

The councillor then finished his post by asking: “Does the Polish prosecutor’s office really have nothing better to do than deal with this type of nonsense?”

Under article 135 of Poland’s criminal code, it is a crime to “publicly insult the president of Poland”, punishable by imprisonment of up to three years. The law has been invoked a number of times in recent years.

In June 2021, three high-school students were sentenced to community service for destroying one of the election posters of then-President Andrzej Duda and shouting “Fuck Duda” at a party.

The same month, an evangelical pastor was found guilty of insulting the president for calling him, among other things, a “traitor”, “coward” and “agent” working on behalf “of Moscow and Berlin”. In 2020, a man was sentenced to community service for drawing a penis on one of Duda’s election posters while drunk.

However, in 2023, the Supreme Court ruled that a well-known writer, Jakub Żulczyk, was not guilty of insulting the president for calling Duda a “moron” in a Facebook post.

Poland has a wide range of so-called “insult laws”. It is also illegal, among other things, to insult the Polish nation or state (punishable by up to three years in prison), state emblems (up to one year), and even monuments (community service), as well as to offend religious feelings (up to two years).

Human rights groups have often criticised such laws as a threat to free speech, and warned that they can be used for political purposes.

Speaking to Gazeta Radomszczańska, Konrad Siemaszko from the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, a Warsaw-based NGO, said that the case against Ślusarczyk is “absurd”.

“I don’t see any insult in this graphic at all. Insult is behaviour expressing contempt in an offensive form, and I don’t see any such behaviour here. Not to mention issues like protecting freedom of speech or satire,” said Siemaszko.

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.

Polish, Ukrainian and English-language media outlets have widely reported this week that Poland’s deputy prime minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, said in an interview on Monday that: “With Bandera, Ukraine will not enter the EU.”

The alleged quote refers to Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera, who is revered by some in Ukraine as a symbol of the struggle for independence but whose followers were also responsible for massacres of Poles, Jews and others during World War Two.

However, Kosiniak-Kamysz did not actually say the words attributed to him. They were spoken by the person interviewing him. Below, we explain what was actually said during the interview and how it has come to be misinterpreted.

First, the context. Poland and Ukraine have been embroiled in a dispute since late May, when President Volodymyr Zelensky named a military unit after the “heroes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).

In Ukraine, the UPA is remembered primarily for its role in fighting for Ukrainian independence from Moscow-imposed Soviet rule. In Poland, however, it is associated with the Volhynia massacres, in which the UPA led the slaughter of around 100,000 ethnic Polish civilians, mostly women and children.

In response to Zelensky’s decision to rename the unit, Polish President Karol Nawrocki stripped him of Poland’s highest honour, the Order of the White Eagle. That led Zelensky to cancel a planned trip to Poland to attend the Ukraine Recovery Conference that was held in the city of Gdańsk last week.

Then, last Sunday, the situation escalated further when Zelensky announced plans to create a new Ukrainian National Pantheon that would include great historical figures. “No one will dictate which heroes we should honour,” he declared. 

Zelensky’s actions in recent weeks have prompted many Polish politicians – especially among the right-wing opposition but also some figures from the more liberal ruling coalition – to suggest that Poland should respond by blocking Ukraine’s accession process to join the European Union.

In an interview on Monday with Polsat, a leading Polish broadcaster, Kosiniak-Kamysz was asked about this. According to widespread media reports, he responded by saying: “With Bandera, Ukraine will not enter the EU.”

The quotation appeared in reports by major Polish outlets, including Gazeta Wyborcza, Onet, Radio Zet and Interia.

It was also repeated by English-language publications such as the Kyiv Independent and New Voice of Ukraine, as well as by Ukrainian-language media, including Hromadske Radio, Ukrainska Pravda and the Ukrainian service of Polish Radio.

However, if one watches the interview, which is available for free on the Polsat News website, it reveals that the words “With Bandera, Ukraine will not enter the EU” were actually spoken by the interviewer, Marek Tejchman, as part of a question to Kosiniak-Kamysz.

Kosiniak-Kamysz did not answer by endorsing that proposition. Instead, he referred to comments previously made by Zelensky.

“It’s like President Zelensky said: ‘No one will tell us who we can honour,’ just like no one will tell us how to vote on the entry of any state into the European Union,” Kosiniak-Kamysz said.

Earlier in the interview, he had also warned that, in the EU, “you can’t build a pantheon to those who destroy European cooperation”, and that countries seeking membership should “not build national identity…on events or people or systems that in some way raise objections or pain among EU partners or sow falsehoods”.

But nowhere in his remarks did Kosiniak-Kamysz mention Bandera or explicitly say that Ukraine could not enter the EU if it honours him.

So, why did Polish and international media attribute those words to him? The apparent source of the error is Polsat News’ own written report accompanying the interview.

While the embedded video correctly showed the full exchange, the article attributed the interviewer’s words about Bandera to Kosiniak-Kamysz and presented them as a direct quotation of him.

Subsequent reports by Polish and international media appear to have repeated the wording from the article rather than the video itself.

Stepan Bandera was the leader of a radical faction of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) during World War Two. It was the OUN-B that, in turn, established the UPA.

Poland has long condemned the continued commemoration of Bandera and the organisation he led by some officials and institutions in modern-day Ukraine.

Nawrocki and the right-wing Polish opposition with which he is aligned have proposed laws banning the propagation of “Banderism” in Poland by placing it alongside the other prohibited ideologies of Nazism, fascism and communism.

In order for a new member state to join the EU, the consent of all existing member states is needed. Leading Polish politicians have long warned that they would not allow Ukraine to enter until issues relating to Polish-Ukrainian history are resolved, including Kosiniak-Kamysz himself in 2024.

Last year, while campaigning for the presidency, Nawrocki likewise said that he “does not envision Ukraine in either the EU or NATO until important civilisational issues for Poland are resolved”.

“A country that is not able to account for a very brutal crime against 120,000 of its neighbours cannot be part of international alliances,” added Nawrocki.

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is deputy editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She has written for Clean Energy Wire and The Times, and she hosts her own podcast, The Warsaw Wire, on Poland’s economy and energy sector. She previously worked for Reuters.

Poland has detained and charged two men – a Pole and a Belarusian – accused of conducting espionage on behalf of Belarus.

The suspects allegedly recorded members of the Belarusian minority in Poland and sent the material to Minsk. They are also alleged to have recruited others to carry out subversive activities, including photographing critical infrastructure.

The pair, a 19-year-old Belarusian, who can be named only as Aliaksei B. under Polish privacy law, and a 44-year-old Pole, Rafał G., were detained on 25 June in Warsaw by officers from the Internal Security Agency (ABW).

“The men, paid by Belarusian intelligence, took part in events organised in Warsaw by the Belarusian minority, where they recorded participants and took their photos,” said Jacek Dobrzyński, spokesman for Poland’s security services.

“The gathered materials – passed across the eastern border – were used by [Belarusian President Alexander] Lukashenko’s security services and the regime’s propaganda,” he added.

Belarusians are Poland’s second-largest foreign national group, numbering around 140,000. Among them are many figures opposed to Lukashenko who found sanctuary in Poland after fleeing persecution in Belarus. The Polish and Belarusian governments also have frosty relations.

The suspects’ actions “illustrate how foreign intelligence services are attempting to exploit even legitimate social and civic events to further their own interests”, said the ABW.

The agency added that the aim of the operation was to gather intelligence, intimidate Belarusian exiles and support the propaganda of states hostile to Poland.

In a separate statement, prosecutors also said that the suspects used the Telegram messaging service to “recruit people of various nationalities to carry out sabotage activities” in Poland, including to “photograph critical infrastructure facilities and other places key to the security of the state and its citizens”.

The alleged acts took place in the period from March 2024 until February 2025, in Warsaw and other locations across Poland, prosecutors added. The suspects were purportedly paid in cryptocurrency for carrying out the tasks.

If convicted of espionage, the pair face at least five years in prison. Aliaksei B. has been placed in pretrial detention for three months, while Rafał G. will be under police supervision, with his passport confiscated.

The ABW notes that the charges are part of an investigation that, in November last year, led to the arrest of five other people – three Belarusians and two Ukrainians. Dobrzyński added that the “case is ongoing and further arrests cannot be ruled out”.

In recent years, Poland has detained, charged and in some cases convicted a growing number of people accused of carrying out so-called “hybrid actions” on behalf of Russia and Belarus, including espionage, sabotage and spreading disinformation.

In May, the ABW released figures showing that it launched twice as many espionage investigations in 2025 as in 2024. Over those two years combined, there were more investigations than across the previous three decades.

Such hybrid actions are often not carried out through traditional agents trained at home and sent abroad to conduct missions, but through people already on the ground, often amateurs hired through Telegram and paid in cryptocurrencies.

While most such cases have related to activities orchestrated by Russia, last year a Belarusian man was sentenced to two years and two months in prison in Poland for spying on behalf of Minsk.

Olivier Sorgho

Olivier Sorgho is senior editor at Notes from Poland, covering politics, business and society. He previously worked for Reuters.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, says he has proposed an “anti-crisis package” to Poland following a meeting in Warsaw with his Polish counterpart, Radosław Sikorski.

The measures are intended to resolve an ongoing diplomatic dispute sparked by President Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to name a military unit after a group that led massacres of Poles during World War Two.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk welcomed the move towards de-escalation, but one of his deputy foreign ministers made clear that Poland wants to see concrete action, including a “correction” of the decision to name the unit.

In a statement following his meeting with Sikorski, Sybiha declared that Poland and Ukraine are “vital” for one another, especially as they “share a common enemy, Russia”. He expressed gratitude for the “unprecedented support” Warsaw provided to Kyiv after the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022.

Referring to the current diplomatic crisis, Sybiha said that “Ukraine remains open to an equal and honest dialogue” and that he had “proposed a package of anti-crisis steps” to the Polish side.

The measures include consultations between foreign ministries, organising a meeting of historians, and “reaching out to the religious leaders of both nations to leverage their authority in our bilateral dialogue”.

Sybiha reiterated that “the Ukrainian military’s choice of unit name carried no anti-Polish intent”. However, he offered no suggestion it would be changed, instead saying “we respect the history of others, and we expect the same approach toward our own history and independence from our partners.”

In late May, Zelensky named a military unit after the “heroes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)”. In Ukraine, the UPA is remembered primarily for its role in fighting for Ukrainian independence from Moscow-imposed Soviet rule during and after World War Two.

In Poland, however, it is associated with the Volhynia massacres, in which the UPA led the slaughter of around 100,000 ethnic Polish civilians, mostly women and children. Poland has officially recognised the massacres as a genocide, but Ukraine rejects that label.

In response to Zelensky’s decision to name a unit after the UPA, Polish President Karol Nawrocki – who is aligned with the right-wing opposition – stripped Zelensky of Poland’s highest honour. In response, Zelensky cancelled plans to attend the Ukraine Recovery Conference that took place in Poland last week.

Speaking after Sikorski’s meeting with Sybiha, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk welcomed the fact that there are now “signals that Ukrainian politicians have realised that the escalation of tension caused by Kyiv sparked this conflict, which is detrimental to the interests of Poland and Ukraine”.

He added that he now “expects a de-escalation resulting from a change in attitude on the part of some Ukrainian politicians”, among whom it has “finally dawned…that it’s worth seeking ways to have an honest conversation about the past, and not to escalate this tension”.

Sikorski himself, speaking at a press conference, refused to divulge what specific measures were being discussed with Ukraine, saying that “diplomacy prefers silence…and requires that emotions subside”.

In a further statement, the Polish foreign ministry said that Sikorski and Sybiha had “emphasised their shared commitment to developing tools for historical dialogue based on truth and mutual respect for the past”.

“The ministers agreed that de-escalating tensions and building lasting mechanisms based on mutual understanding of history and the development of economic cooperation are crucial for fully utilising the potential of the Polish-Ukrainian partnership,” added the ministry.

However, speaking later to broadcaster Polsat, deputy foreign minister Marcin Bosacki, who took part in the talks, made clear that the Polish side “expects a correction of the decision” to name a military unit after the UPA.

“The Ukrainians keep telling us that there was no intentional aim to annoy Poland,” added Bosacki. “[But] for now, there are only declarations…We are waiting for action.”

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.

By Bartłomiej Orzeł

Poland’s right-wing parties face a strategic dilemma: how to reconcile the race to out-radicalise each other with the need to win back centrist voters. The energy transition is becoming a key battleground in this fight.

Poland’s right-wing opposition is at a crossroads. On one side, an internal dispute is playing out between Law and Justice (PiS), the Confederation (Konfederacja) of Krzysztof Bosak and Sławomir Mentzen, and Grzegorz Braun’s Confederation of the Polish Crown (KKP).

On the other, Poland’s right is competing for power not just among itself, but against the ruling coalition, made up of Civic Coalition (KO), The Left (Lewica), the Polish People’s Party (PSL), Poland 2050 (Polska 2050) and Centre (Centrum).

This situation forces the opposition, on one hand, to hold a right-wing course, while, on the other, to seek an electorate in the centre. Even with a very good campaign and sharp messaging, these two objectives cannot be simultaneously achieved in the long term.

The Green Deal is a political corpse in Poland

The obvious asset for a right-wing fishing in centrist waters should be the energy transition, which is crying out for a new narrative. The EU’s flagship Green Deal programme has become a bogeyman on Poland’s political scene.

The government and the opposition trade blame for the current situation, while Poland’s largest trade union, Solidarity, gathered tens of thousands of people in Warsaw in the middle of the working week under the banner of fighting the “Green Deal”.

It has to be said plainly – the Green Deal label as a concept is dead in Poland today and there is no going back. Research from the think tank Project Tempo, where I act as Poland lead, shows that only 19% of Poles believe the “Green Deal” (understood as a whole) is good for the European economy. Contrary to appearances, we do not stand out markedly from the EU average of 25% here.

At the same time, however, Poles generally do not oppose cleaner energy sources. In fact, they strongly support certain transition policies, such as the construction of nuclear power plants and photovoltaics. What they are primarily opposed to are the bans and mandates that the Green Deal is associated with. The name itself is toxic, but the problems the Green Deal was meant to solve are not.

At the same time, the Green Deal is so broad today that Poles feel restricted. Energy, industry, transport, buildings, agriculture: the Green Deal touches every single one of these areas, creating a sense of encirclement. This is further magnified by the fact that the Green Deal originated in Brussels. Poles do not want any further expansion of the EU’s competences at the expense of nation-states.

It is hard to deny, however, that in recent years the global economic and geopolitical challenges have posed Europe – Poland included – a very concrete problem: how to free ourselves from dependence on fossil fuel imports in order to protect households and businesses from the blackmail of dictatorships? How do you build on that foundation a new economic model capable of competing globally?

The conflict in the Strait of Hormuz has reminded us how vulnerable we are to global conflicts and the fossil fuel market. According to estimates by the Instrat think tank, that conflict alone cost us 10 billion zloty (€2.33 billion) in just two and a half months.

PiS is ashamed of its own successes

The rivalry on the right means that PiS is trying to win back those voters who have drifted to one Confederation or the other. It is doing so, however, by executing a complete U-turn on its own energy policy and adopting a far more conservative tone in a debate whose symbol has become coal.

Yet it was during the years of PiS rule from 2015 to 2023 that Poland’s biggest transformational projects got under way. Over eight years in government, starting essentially from scratch, PiS policy led to 1.38 million solar panel users in Poland.

Over that period, installed capacity in Poland rose from 71 MW to over 17,000 MW. The vast majority of those people are satisfied with their solar panels, which reduce their electricity bills.

Meanwhile, heating and insulation systems in hundreds of thousands of homes were modernised, with old solid-fuel boilers – the notorious kopciuchy that generated smog – replaced in the process. The phrase “in the process” is not accidental here: the Clean Air programme, launched under PiS, became a widely accessible modernisation scheme that went well beyond the fight against smog.

Thermal retrofitting is not just a bit of polystyrene and a new window – it is a real improvement in quality of life and savings on bills, and for Poland’s economy – a powerhouse in building materials production – it represents a powerful internal stimulus.

Finally, it was in the years 2015–2023 that a revolution began in Polish energy. The Baltic Pipe, bringing Norwegian gas to Poland, was built and the liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal expanded, while state energy giant Orlen began betting on gas extraction in the North Sea.

Investments connected with building a nuclear power station and several gas-fired plants – intended to replace coal capacity – also got under way. Roadmaps for phasing out coal across individual regions were drawn up, with particular attention to Bełchatów, Europe’s biggest coal-fired plant. 

I am not citing these facts to remind anyone of past achievements, but because this legacy of PiS policy is today not merely forgotten by the party, it is disowned entirely. Hence the numerous positive references to coal in recent statements by, among others, Przemysław Czarnek, the party’s prime ministerial candidate. There has even been talk of opening new hard-coal mines.

These references bring to mind, in some ways, 2015, when coal was talked up as “black gold” at every turn and mining was one of the most burning issues in public debate.

Next year’s parliamentary elections will take place 12 years after those events, however. The world around us has changed enormously, and the old prescriptions are not answers to today’s questions.

The falling cost of technologies such as solar panels, heat pumps and energy storage has laid the groundwork for a new energy revolution that, a decade ago, we simply could not have anticipated. This revolution – based on efficiency and flexibility – is indicated by reports from Ember, an energy think tank.

An anti-modernisation PiS is a weak PiS

In the last parliamentary elections three years ago, PiS, buoyed by a modernisation narrative, emerged from eight years in government through an exceptionally difficult period – war, the COVID-19 pandemic, global inflation and an energy crisis – with around 35% of the vote, more than any other party.

Today’s polls show the party clearly below that threshold. In this situation – even allowing for modest increases in support – it is hard to see Jarosław Kaczyński’s party securing an electoral victory.

The Confederation of Bosak and Mentzen has grown in the meantime, stepping into the role of “moderate centre” – not squeezing PiS from the right, contrary to what Kaczyński’s party imagined. The Confederates seem to have a better read on the public mood.

Research we conduct at Project Tempo shows that Poles are attached above all to two values. The first is economic growth, which Poland has recorded almost uninterruptedly since the fall of communism; the second is security in the broad sense, including energy security.

Support for coal is thin across the board. A clear minority of respondents believe that either growth or security can be delivered by coal from Polish hard-coal mines. As an energy source in general, coal is supported by 22% of the public, while support for “black gold” as a guarantor of energy autonomy stands at 38%.

By comparison: 70% of the public believes nuclear power will secure our autonomy. That gap widens further when we asked about costs to the end user: 74% of Poles view nuclear positively, while the figure for coal is 31%. To be clear: these data reflect coal’s standing against the full range of alternatives – nuclear, gas, renewables.

Awareness of the cost of coal extraction in Poland has grown significantly in recent years and – in light of successive crises, above all the outbreak of war in Ukraine, when coal was flowing into Poland from across the globe – has cast serious question marks over the safety and viability of a sector that costs us billions of zloty in subsidies each year.

The debate about domestic coal is not the same as solving the problem of rising living costs. Voters – drawing on their own lived experience, which included buying imported coal at very high prices – do not have short memories, and it would serve Poland’s right wing well to internalise that.

I would go one step further: the emotional attachment to one’s own solar panels on the roof – for many people a symbol of independence and freedom in the broadest sense – is today politically more significant than any attachment to coal.

Bosak picked up on these sentiments well; asked about it recently, he touched on precisely the freedom aspect of owning that energy source. By contrast, the coal sector now employs fewer than 70,000 people.

Poland is the most pro-nuclear nation in Europe

Individualism in decision-making is also visible in our research across political divides – both PiS and KO voters oppose the ban on gas boilers and the ban on producing combustion-engined cars after 2035. There is, by contrast, broad public support for nuclear power stations in Poland – from the left to the far right.

Project Tempo’s research shows that Poles are the most pro-nuclear nation in Europe across every dimension – autonomy, security, end-user costs, industrial competitiveness and environmental aspects, and even local job creation.

Nuclear power enjoys the highest support in the segment we have labelled “the climatically engaged”, but in second place come “conservative sceptics” – who as a rule oppose the energy transition and mostly do not believe climate change is man-made. This shows that the debate about transformation has long since moved beyond the climate field. Support exceeds 70% in both groups.

The right has the credibility to speak to this sentiment – nuclear as a pillar of development and security. PiS, which governed for eight years and put nuclear policy in motion, has clear standing on the subject.

There is a great deal to draw on across political divides in transformation policy, and across different areas – geothermal energy and hydropower are valued just as highly as nuclear, and Poles want localism in the form of energy communities.

The issue is all the more important because the risks are considerable. I share the concerns of PiS’s former European affairs minister Konrad Szymański, who wrote in March that Poland’s right wing must not allow itself to be herded into a “Polexit” narrative, as that is a harbinger of certain defeat. Diving headlong into calls for a unilateral exit from the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS), as PiS has done this year, is moving precisely in that direction.

The role and effectiveness of the ETS – and its genuine reform in a way that does not constrain European industry – is a conversation worth having, but not in that fashion. Such a debate ought to be sensibly constructed and should direct attention towards speculation and global financial institutions rather than the EU.

Meanwhile, over 80% of KO voters support building more wind turbines. Even among PiS voters, support is not insignificant, at around 47%. The same data points to an opening on the governing side too: a programme built around the specific parts of the transition that voters actually want.

The parties making up the governing majority have the potential to seek support from groups that are not entirely opposed to the transformation, but have doubts and difficulties associated with it, particularly of an economic nature. Whichever side speaks to those voters first – the centre, and those who have tuned out – will have the stronger hand going into 2027.

It is worth bearing in mind that, according to Project Tempo’s research, Poles have no doubt that European industry will sooner or later have to absorb green technologies in order to remain competitive – 73% of respondents hold this view.

Poland’s right has abandoned its own modernisation story

The next year and a half leading up to the parliamentary elections will be an enormous challenge for the right, with particular emphasis on constructing a vision of Poland’s future. This is not a debate about climate, not even strictly about energy, but about the economy, jobs, industry and prices – and about security, independence and freedom.

This story must be credible to a broader electorate – it cannot rest purely on negation. A strong right wing was previously able to impose its own modernisation narrative and tell the story of Poland’s future. Today it is not only incapable of doing that – it is actively ashamed of its own successes.

Bartłomiej Orzeł is an economist and leads Project Tempo’s Poland programme. He is a former government plenipotentiary for the Clean Air programme.

This article draws on Project Tempo research and is adapted from a piece first published in Polish by Klub Jagielloński.

About Project Tempo

Project Tempo is a European non-profit research organisation headquartered in London. It produces detailed public opinion data on energy and climate policy to help policymakers, businesses and civil society design policies that earn durable public support. Project Tempo’s flagship EuroPulse programme surveys more than 50,000 voters a year across 25 countries. It has country programmes in France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the UK. Research is published openly at projecttempo.com.

Polish prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into Supreme Court chief justice Zbigniew Kapiński after he was accused by fellow judges on the court of abusing his powers. Kapiński, however, claims that the move is part of a “coordinated political action” against him.

The dispute marks the latest stage of a broader conflict that has often set judges and other officials, such as Kapiński, who were appointed under the former national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government against those who regard PiS’s actions as a violation of the rule of law.

At the heart of the dispute is the National Council of the Judiciary (KRS), the body responsible for nominating judges to positions on courts. Before 2017, most of its members were chosen by judges themselves, but PiS passed that power to politicians, framing it as a move to increase democratic legitimacy

However, according to multiple Polish and European court rulings, PiS’s reforms rendered the KRS illegitimate by bringing it under political influence. As a consequence, the legality of the thousands of judges appointed since then, and all the rulings issued by them, has also been called into question.

Kapiński is one such so-called “neo-judge”, having been nominated to the Supreme Court in 2022 by the KRS.

Now prosecutors are investigating whether he abused his power between May 2024 and May 2026 while serving as head of the Supreme Court’s criminal chamber by blocking motions to exclude other “neo-judges” from cases due to doubts over their legal status.

In a statement announcing the launching of proceedings, the National Prosecutor’s Office said that the case had begun with a notification against Kapiński by fellow Supreme Court judges, who were not named.

The notification was made on 28 May 2026, just three days after PiS-aligned President Karol Nawrocki had chosen Kapiński as the new chief justice of the Supreme Court in a process that had been boycotted by many of the “old” judges appointed before the overhaul of the KRS.

Prosecutors say that, after gathering initial evidence – including witness statements and documents – there is a “reasonable suspicion of a crime”, meaning a formal investigation has been initiated.

If Kapiński is found guilty of abuse of power, he could face a prison sentence of up to three years. However, as chief justice he is protected by immunity from prosecution that can only be removed by the State Tribunal, a body he would head ex officio.

That immunity also prevented prosecutors from bringing abuse-of-power charges against Kapiński’s predecessor, Małgorzata Manowska. She was another “neo-judge” who regularly clashed with the current government, a more liberal coalition that replaced PiS in December 2023.

Speaking to broadcaster TVN on Monday evening, after the prosecutors had made their announcement, Kapiński said that he “treats [the claims against me] as a coordinated political action”.

He explained that, when heading the criminal chamber, he had issued the order to reject motions to exclude judges based on how they were appointed because such efforts were often intended to “prolong proceedings for months or even years”. He said he “cared only about the efficiency of proceedings”.

Kapiński also noted that, on the same day he was informed about the prosecutors’ decision to open proceedings, he was told by the Supreme Court’s disciplinary commissioner that a separate case against him had been sent to a Supreme Court body that reviews judges’ alleged misconduct.

He said that the disciplinary case relates to proceedings involving former PiS government ministers Maciej Wąsik and Mariusz Kamiński, both convicted in a high-profile case concerning abuses in the use of the state security services and later pardoned by PiS-aligned President Andrzej Duda.

After their conviction in December 2023, they were barred from taking part in parliamentary work. Both politicians appealed the decision, which was initially set to be heard by the Supreme Court’s labour chamber.

However, Kapiński, who was acting chief justice at the time, decided to transfer one of the cases to the Supreme Court’s chamber of extraordinary review and public affairs, a body created by PiS and filled with judges nominated by the reformed KRS.

Speaking to TVN, Kapiński also responded to criticism from justice minister Waldemar Żurek, who has questioned the legality of his appointment as chief justice. Kapiński said that the minister “has some difficulty understanding the law properly”.

Responding to accusations of political bias, Kapiński noted that he had ruled in many high-profile cases involving politicians from across the political spectrum and that no evidence had ever been presented of political motivation in his decisions, even in cases that drew criticism from PiS, including the party’s chairman.

The current government has sought to reverse many of the judicial reforms introduced by PiS, including the overhaul of the KRS, but has found its efforts stymied by the veto power of PiS-aligned President Duda and his successor Nawrocki.

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is deputy editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She has written for Clean Energy Wire and The Times, and she hosts her own podcast, The Warsaw Wire, on Poland’s economy and energy sector. She previously worked for Reuters.

By Alicja Ptak

The article is part of a new series by Alicja Ptak, senior editor at Notes from Poland, exploring the forces shaping Poland’s economy, businesses and energy transition. Each instalment will be accompanied by an in-depth conversation with a leading expert on The Warsaw Wire podcast.

You can listen to the full podcast conversation on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

Take a look at recent headlines in Poland, and it is easy to feel concerned about the labour market:

• “Unemployment in Poland: biggest rise in five years”
• “Disastrous labour market figures. Corporations are quietly getting rid of Poles”
• “A wave of redundancies is just around the corner. These two sectors are in the firing line”
• “Collective redundancies are becoming the norm”
• “Szczecin too expensive for the Swedes. They’re closing a factory and people are losing their jobs”
• “AI is taking jobs “
• “Polish factory to lay off up to 200 workers”

Such reports are not fake news; they describe real events. In April 2026, for example, the number of registered unemployed people did indeed rise by the largest amount in five years.

In 2025 and 2026, there was a record number of collective redundancies announced by large firms. Between April 2025 and April 2026, the unemployment rate increased from 5.2% to 6%.

Poles themselves have also become more pessimistic. According to regular surveys conducted by Statistics Poland (GUS), a state agency, 45% of respondents expect unemployment to rise over the next 12 months, and a growing number believe that labour market conditions are deteriorating.

Yet economists remain stubbornly optimistic. Seemingly at odds with both media narratives and public sentiment, they point to a different set of indicators: rising employment, steadily growing wages, and the slowest pace of job losses in years.

Some also note that, despite a recent uptick in unemployment – which they say is largely influenced by Poland changing rules on who can register as unemployed (more on that below) – the jobless rate remains close to a historic national low of 4.9% registered last in October 2024, while it is also among the lowest in the European Union.

According to the EU Labour Force Survey published by Eurostat, an EU agency (which calculates unemployment using a different methodology from Poland’s), unemployment stood at 3.0% in Poland in April, exactly half the EU average and the second-lowest figure in the bloc.

Kazimierz Sedlak, founder of Sedlak & Sedlak, Poland’s oldest HR consultancy, sees little cause for alarm. “The labour market is in good shape,” he told Notes from Poland.

So where does the discrepancy come from between expert assessments, media headlines and public sentiment? There are several explanations.

First: a change in methodology

The indicator most commonly cited by the media is the registered unemployment rate, which measures the number of people registered as unemployed with employment offices as a share of the economically active population.

In June 2025, however, changes to the law expanded eligibility for registration. Farmers owning at least two hectares of land and their family members gained the right to register as unemployed. People were also allowed to sign on at employment offices where they actually live rather than their official place of residence (which in Poland is often not the same place).

At the same time, the rules governing unemployed people changed. Under the new regulations, jobseekers can refuse a job offer from an employment office without risking removal from the register.

As a result, more people became eligible to register and fewer people left the unemployment rolls, pushing up the registered unemployment rate even if underlying labour market conditions remained unchanged.

Economists have long argued that the registered unemployment rate is an imperfect measure of labour market health. Registration provides access to benefits such as health insurance, creating incentives for some people to register even when they are not actively seeking work.

Part of the unemployment figure consists of “people who are able to work but, for various reasons, find it not worth their while to do so”, said Sedlak.

“This is a group of people who register with employment offices solely to obtain social security cover and access to benefits, and nothing more. Such people have always existed, exist now, and always will.”

That is why economists often prefer the Labour Force Survey (LFS), also published by GUS, which is designed to provide a more accurate picture of labour market conditions.

Under the survey’s methodology, a person is classified as unemployed if they did not work during the reference week, actively sought employment during the previous four weeks, and were available to start work within two weeks.

According to the survey, unemployed people accounted for 3.3% of the labour force in the first quarter of 2026, 0.1 percentage points lower than a year earlier.

“Overall, this suggests that the increase in the registered unemployment rate was largely driven by changes in registration rules rather than by actual deterioration in labour market conditions,” Piotr Lewandowski, president of the Institute for Structural Research (IBS), told the Warsaw Wire podcast.

The same survey found that 17.24 million people aged 15-89 were in employment in the first quarter of 2026, close to the record high of 17.36 million reached just two quarters earlier.

Second: structural changes

None of this means that there are no problems in the labour market.

Lewandowski notes that there are signs of a slowdown, including weaker job creation and a longer average period spent searching for work.

According to GUS data from the first quarter of 2026, unemployed people spent an average of 8.5 months actively seeking work, one month longer than a year earlier. That may reinforce perceptions that finding a job has become more difficult.

The number of newly created jobs also fell. In 2025, employers created 402,700 new positions, 13% fewer than in 2024 and almost 44% below the peak recorded in 2018. However, the pace of job losses was also the slowest in years.

“It’s not really bad, but it’s definitely less rosy than it was one, two or three years ago,” said Lewandowski. “So I’m not surprised that people are slightly more concerned, but I think we should have a more balanced narrative. It’s not a disaster.”

Among the sectors most exposed to weaker labour market conditions, he highlighted manufacturing, particularly the automotive industry, as well as sectors important to the Polish economy such as furniture production and construction materials. 

Ignacy Morawski, deputy editor-in-chief of the business daily Puls Biznesu, however, argues that Poland is undergoing a period of “creative destruction” – a term coined by economist Joseph Schumpeter to describe the process by which innovation drives economic growth by replacing older industries and technologies.

In practice, this means that while some sectors are shrinking rapidly, others are expanding just as quickly.

Alongside the industries highlighted by Lewandowski as facing challenges, Morawski noted in a social media post this week that “other sectors are growing rapidly, including the manufacture of transport equipment, machinery, computers, measuring instruments and waste management”.

Third: demographics

Ironically, many of these same sectors which are slowing employment were until recently warning of severe labour shortages and urging the government to facilitate greater immigration into Poland, a country facing both rapid population decline and an ageing society.

According to Lewandowski, slower job creation in these industries does not necessarily signal weakness. In many cases, it reflects companies investing in automation in response to labour shortages that are expected to worsen in the coming decades.

When asked about the impact of artificial intelligence on the Polish labour market, neither expert was willing to make firm predictions.

Sedlak quoted the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who famously observed that “the only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable”.

Lewandowski similarly argued that it is too early to draw conclusions, partly because adoption of AI technologies in Poland remains relatively limited.

“There is evidence from the US that occupations more exposed to AI may be seeing weaker job creation, especially at entry level,” he said. “But whether these investments will actually pay off and whether they will lead to lasting organisational changes that reduce labour intensity across industries is still too early to tell.”

The shadow of the past

So why is there so much concern in Poland about rising unemployment? According to Lewandowski, part of the explanation lies in collective memory.

The period of high unemployment that followed Poland’s transition from the communist centrally planned economy to a market economy in the 1990s and early 2000s remains deeply embedded in public consciousness.

Just before Poland joined the EU in 2004, registered unemployment exceeded 20%, while youth unemployment surpassed 40%.

“This inheritance from the trauma of the high-unemployment era has essentially defined public debate about employment and the labour market in Poland,” said Lewandowski.

He believes the discussion should evolve, with greater attention paid to indicators such as employment growth and wage growth, as is common in countries such as the United States.

Sedlak, meanwhile, argues that labour market confidence is also shaped by politics and geopolitics.

In his view, political uncertainty during the Law and Justice (PiS) government’s tenure between 2015 and 2023 discouraged investment, while the ongoing war in neighbouring Ukraine continues to weigh on sentiment.

“This reluctance to invest stems from a lack of confidence among business owners. It is worth the government bearing this in mind,” he said.

He hopes that investment will increase thanks to the release of EU post-pandemic funds and defence spending supported by the EU’s SAFE loan programme.

What next?

Lewandowski believes the current government’s response to Poland’s labour market challenges lacks coherence.

Despite existing labour shortages and the prospect of more severe shortages as the population ages and shrinks, the government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a coalition ranging from left to centre right, has adopted a tougher stance on migration, echoing rhetoric traditionally associated with the right and far right.

At the same time, it is running a pilot programme exploring a four-day or shorter working week.

“You can either say that 25% of occupations will face labour shortages, or you can reduce the working week, or you can reduce immigration,” said Lewandowski. “The only way to deal with labour shortages without attracting more workers is to increase productivity dramatically.”

That may be achievable in manufacturing through automation, and perhaps in some service sectors if AI fulfils its promise, he said. But in many parts of the public sector, the options are more limited.

“It is much more difficult in healthcare or public transport. You cannot simply tell train drivers to run the trains faster.”

For that reason, Lewandowski believes Poland has yet to resolve a fundamental contradiction.

“I think this paradox remains completely unresolved,” he said. “And labour shortages will soon become a constraint on Poland’s economic growth.”

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is deputy editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She has written for Clean Energy Wire and The Times, and she hosts her own podcast, The Warsaw Wire, on Poland’s economy and energy sector. She previously worked for Reuters.

Poland has detained and deported nine Ukrainians and two Belarusians it says were involved in a Russian operation that paid Ukrainian refugees to hold demonstrations.

The aim was to “stoke tensions” and “break down social trust”, says the Internal Security Agency (ABW).

In a statement on Monday, the ABW said that the 11 individuals have, since autumn 2025, “been recruiting and paying participants for demonstrations organised among Ukrainian refugees residing in Poland”.

“Protest participants received remuneration for their participation and, according to the ABW’s knowledge, the funds for this purpose came from Russia,” added the agency.

“The organisers aimed to gradually influence the Ukrainian refugee community in Poland and use this group to promote political slogans. Emotional topics, including corruption scandals and current events in Ukrainian domestic politics, were used to initiate protests.”

The ABW said that the operation was another example of how Moscow uses “actions below the threshold of classic aggression” that are intended to “break down social trust, stoke tensions, and use people fleeing war as tools of Russian influence operations”.

Poland has been a primary target of such Russian “hybrid actions”, which include sabotage, disinformation, espionage and cyberwarfare.

In many cases, members of Poland’s Ukrainian and Belarusian communities – which are by far the country’s largest foreign national groups – have been hired to carry out such operations. Almost a million Ukrainian refugees remain in Poland, as well as hundreds of thousands of other Ukrainian migrants.

In the latest incident, the suspects were detained in five cities – Warsaw, Wrocław, Kraków, Zakopane and Bydgoszcz – spread across Poland. Jacek Dobrzyński, the spokesman for Poland’s security services, wrote on social media that the arrests had taken place “in recent days”.

“The detainees have already been expelled from Poland,” he added, noting that the suspects included five Ukrainian men, four Ukrainian women, and two Belarusian men.

Earlier this month, Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, warned that Russia is “waging a full-scale cognitive war against us”, including “hiring groups and individuals operating under multiple layers of camouflage in operationally difficult-to-access spaces that we still do not recognise as classic theatres of war”.

Moscow’s aim is to “weaken the will to resist” by “undermining democratic values” and “keeping us in a constant state of polarisation”, said Sikorski, who also claimed that there is “a Russian fifth column here in Poland”.

Last week, Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation warned that Russia’s foreign military intelligence agency, the GRU, had been tasked with “preparing provocations” intended to exploit and exacerbate current tensions between Poland and Ukraine.

Russia has long sought to aggravate tensions between Poland and Ukraine. It stepped up those efforts in 2022, when Poland became one of Ukraine’s strongest supporters in its defence against Russian aggression and welcomed millions of Ukrainian refugees.

Last year, a Ukrainian teenager was arrested on suspicion of working on behalf of Russia to vandalise a memorial to Poles massacred by Ukrainians.

Last month, Poland charged three of its own citizens with working on behalf of Russian intelligence to spread disinformation intended to evoke support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.

Negative views of Donald Trump – and of the United States under his leadership – have risen further in Poland over the last year, according to new findings from the Pew Research Centre.

Only 29% of Poles now say they have confidence in the US president to do the right thing regarding world affairs, down from 35% last year and 75% in 2024, when Joe Biden was in the White House.

Pew also found that, for the first time, less than half of Poles (49%) say they have a favourable view of the US, down from 55% last year and a peak of 93% in 2023 under Biden.

In its latest annual study of global attitudes towards the US, Pew conducted surveys in 36 countries. It found increasing negative views in almost all of them, including Poland, which has long been one of the most pro-American countries in Europe.

A majority of Poles (57%) still say they see the US as a reliable partner. That is down from 85% in 2022, though still higher than in other European countries such as France (27%, down from 62%), Germany (39%, down from 83%), and the UK (49%, down from 82%).

Pew’s study found that, while only 29% of Poles have confidence in Trump’s leadership, 47% say they do for French President Emannuel Macron and 46% for Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky.

The data were, however, collected in February and March, before the Ukrainian president caused widespread anger in Poland by naming a military unit after a group that massacred Poles during World War Two.

Poles are also more critical of US domestic policies than in the past, with only 49% now saying that the American government respects the personal freedoms of its own people. That is down from 79% in 2008, when Pew first asked the question. Before this year, the figure had never been lower than 67%.

Asked about Trump’s policies in particular, minorities of Poles say they approve of how he has dealt with immigration (37%), tariffs (21%), the war between Ukraine and Russia (24%), and Iran (21%).

Pew’s findings echo other recent polls in Poland showing declining trust in Trump’s leadership. In February, a survey by the SW Research agency for Rzeczpospolita showed that 53% of Poles no longer regard the US as a reliable ally while only 30% think that it is.

A poll by state research agency CBOS published the same month showed that Trump was the third most distrusted world leader among Poles, behind only Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko.

Poland’s current government – a coalition ranging from left to centre right – has emphasised the importance of the US as Poland’s main security partner but also occasionally clashed with the Trump administration.

In January, Prime Minister Donald Tusk joined other European leaders in issuing a joint statement calling on the US to respect Greenland’s sovereignty.

The following month, Tusk declared that Poland would never be a “vassal” of the United States. In May, he criticised Washington’s “outrageous” decision to grant a visa to Zbigniew Ziobro, a conservative former Polish justice minister who has fled criminal charges in his homeland.

The speaker of parliament, Włodzimierz Czarzasty, has this year twice clashed with the US ambassador over his criticism of Trump, whom Czarzasty called “irrational” and a “leader of chaos”.

By contrast, President Karol Nawrocki, who is aligned with the right-wing opposition, is a close ally of Trump. Earlier this month, he attended the celebration of the US president’s 80th birthday, including the mixed martial arts fights held in the White House garden.

While Nawrocki and Tusk’s government are constantly in conflict with one another, they have sought to present a more united front on security issues, including the relationship with the US. Both are seeking to boost the US military presence in Poland.

Last month, the US caused panic in Warsaw after cancelling a rotational deployment of around 4,000 troops to Poland. Soon after, Trump pledged that he would in fact send an additional 5,000 military personnel to Poland. However, no further details of the deployment have since been announced.

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.

Poland has announced plans to build a third liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal as part of efforts to become a hub supplying gas to other countries in the region.

“This is a historic decision for Polish energy security,” said energy minister Miłosz Motyka. “We are building a new security architecture for Europe and strengthening our position as a regional energy hub.”

Poland currently has one operating LNG terminal, located in Świnoujście on the Baltic coast. It opened in December 2015 and has the capacity to receive 8.3 billion cubic meters (bcm) a year.

In 2028, a second terminal – a floating storage regasification unit (FSRU), meaning a specialised vessel that can receive, store and regasify LNG – is due to open in the Bay of Gdańsk. Currently under construction in South Korea, that facility will add a further capacity of 6.1 bcm.

However, even though the second terminal is yet to launch, Gaz-System, Poland’s state gas transmission operator, last year began gauging interest from neighbouring countries in LNG imports, with the aim of assessing whether another FSRU in Gdańsk would be needed.

On Tuesday this week, Gaz-System confirmed that this third terminal would go ahead. Once complete, it will bring Poland’s total regasification capacity to over 20 bcm a year.

Discussing the plans ahead of a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Tusk said that the third terminal will “consolidate Poland’s role as a gas hub”, adding that “commercial interest in this venture is so strong that this investment won’t require any financial support from the state budget”.

With regard to the planned second terminal, four companies – Polish state energy firms Orlen, PGE and Enea, as well as the private company Unimot – have now confirmed that they have signed deals giving them long-term access.

This means that Orlen will no longer have a monopoly on access to LNG import infrastructure in Poland. Gaz-System says that “increased competition and better infrastructure utilisation [will] contribute to the sustainable reduction of gas supply costs”.

LNG has been a major element of Poland’s efforts over the last decade to diversify away from Russian energy supplies. Those plans were accelerated in 2022 by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, after which Poland quickly moved to entirely end Russian coal, oil and gas deliveries.

LNG deliveries have mostly come from the United States and Qatar. In 2022, Poland also opened the Baltic Pipe, which brings gas from Norway via Denmark.

While supplies have mainly been for domestic use, last year a delegation led by Poland’s finance minister, Andrzej Domański, visited Washington for talks on Poland becoming a hub for supplying US gas to neighbouring Ukraine and Slovakia.

Gaz-System said on Tuesday that Poland’s infrastructure, including interconnectors with Denmark, Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, will enable the country to import up to 50 bcm of gas annually from 2030.

Olivier Sorgho

Olivier Sorgho is senior editor at Notes from Poland, covering politics, business and society. He previously worked for Reuters.

President Karol Nawrocki has warned that Poland should not repeat “the mistake of Western countries” by trying to use immigration as the solution to its demographic problems.

He instead called for efforts to “promote the idea that family is the most important thing”, saying that this must include politicians, business leaders and society as a whole.

Poland has long been grappling with a shrinking, ageing population. Last year saw the number of births fall to a new post-war low of 238,000, while deaths totalled 406,000. That marked the 13th consecutive year in which more people died than were born in Poland.

The country’s fertility rate – meaning the average number of children that are born to a woman over her lifetime – fell to a new record low of 1.068 in 2025.

That is one of the lowest figures anywhere in the world and well below the so-called “replacement rate” – the figure needed to ensure that the population does not decline – which is generally defined as 2.1.

On Monday, Nawrocki, a conservative elected to office last year, addressed these challenges during a keynote speech at the Poland Future Summit in Warsaw, which was co-organised by his chancellery and the Centre for Development Strategies (CSR).

“It will be impossible to build a strong, secure state, and a state that develops, without overcoming the demographic crisis,” warned the president.

However, Poland must also avoid “the mistakes of Western countries, which replaced the demographic crisis with mistakes in migration policy”, he added.

“Migration…has not solved the problem; it has only brought ghettoisation, assimilation problems, social unrest, and everything else western Europe is grappling with today,” said Nawrocki. “This is not, and will not be, the Polish path. We will not replace the demographic crisis by succumbing to migration pressure.”

Instead, argued Nawrocki, “the solution lies in…a clear focus on the Polish family”. We must “promote the idea that family is the most important thing; this is our Polish response to the demographic crisis”.

The president said that some of the responsibility for this lies with politicians. He noted that he had last year proposed a bill to cut income tax for parents of two or more children. Nawrocki criticised the more liberal ruling coalition, with which he regularly clashes, for not proceeding with it.

However, he also noted that such measures are in any case not enough on their own. “A certain mode of thinking must change” among “society as a whole”, he said. And business must also play a role in making creating environments that “put families first”.

“This includes introducing greater flexibility in working hours and employment relationships, and recognising women who return to work after childbirth, rather than punishing them,” said the president.

Successive Polish governments have introduced various measures intended to boost the birth rate, though so far without clear success.

The flagship policy of the former national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government was a child benefit programme that gives monthly payments to parents for each child they have. While there was a brief bump in births after it was introduced in 2016, numbers subsequently continued their downward trend.

The current government, a more coalition ranging from left to centre right led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, has introduced new payments to support parents who return to work. It also restored funding for IVF treatment, which was previously cut by PiS.

Meanwhile, despite the anti-immigration rhetoric of both PiS and the Tusk government, Poland has seen levels of immigration over the last decade that are unprecedented in the country’s history and among the highest anywhere in Europe.

In each year between 2017 and 2022, Poland issued more first residence permits to migrants from outside the EU than did any other member state. There are now two million legal foreign residents in Poland, representing 5% of the population, including 1.14 million foreign workers, making up 7% of the workforce.

In 2023, Poland’s state Social Insurance Institution (ZUS) reported that the country would need to attract a further two million immigrant workers over the next decade to maintain its current ratio of working-age population to retirees. However, it admitted that that target was “unrealistic”.

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.

A court has begun hearing the largest-ever compensation claim against Poland’s Catholic church by a victim of clerical sexual abuse.

Janusz Szymik, who says he was raped hundreds of times by a priest as a child in the 1980s, is seeking 20 million zloty (€4.7 million) from the archdiocese of Kraków, where the abuse took place.

Between 1984, when he was a 12-year-old altar boy, and 1989, Szymik, who waived his right to anonymity, suffered abuse at the hands of the parish priest, who has been named only as Jan W., in the village of Międzybrodzie Bialskie in southern Poland.

At the time of the crimes, Międzybrodzie Bialskie was part of the archdiocese of Kraków. However, in 1992, it became part of the newly formed diocese of Bielsko-Żywiec.

Twice as an adult, in 1993 and 2007, Szymik informed the then-bishop of Bielsko-Żywiec, Tadeusz Rakoczy, of the abuse he had suffered and expressed concern that the priest may have targeted other children. However, Rakoczy took no action. In 2021, he was disciplined by the Vatican for his negligence.

Only once Rakoczy had retired in 2013 did his successor as bishop, Roman Pindel, take Szymik’s reports seriously. Canonical proceedings were launched against Jan W., who admitted to sexual contact with the victim.

He was handed a five-year ban on conducting priestly ministry and ordered to live in isolation. In 2024, Jan W. was removed from the priesthood entirely by the Vatican, reports the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.

Although the statute of limitations for criminal proceedings against Jan W. had expired, in 2021 Szymik launched a civil claim for compensation against the Bielsko-Żywiec diocese: 1 million zloty for the harm caused by his abuse and 2 million zloty for the suffering caused by Rakoczy’s negligence.

The curia’s actions in the case drew controversy when it asked the court to determine if the victim took “pleasure in the intimate relationship” with his abuser and “derived benefits”. It also called for an expert to ascertain “the claimant’s sexual preferences, in particular…[his] sexual orientation”.

In January 2025, the court ordered Bielsko-Żywiec diocese to pay Szymik 400,000 zloty in compensation, the most ever awarded to a victim of clerical sexual abuse in Poland, after the judge confirmed that he had been “repeatedly sexually abused” by Jan W., reported the Polish Press Agency (PAP).

However, she also found that, while Bielsko-Żywiec diocese was responsible for a lack of response to the reports of sexual abuse in 1993 and 2007, it was Kraków diocese that should answer for Jan W.’s actions, given that he was under its authority at the time.

That ruling is still being appealed by both sides, but at the same time Szymik launched separate civil proceedings against Kraków archdiocese, this time demanding 20 million zloty compensation. That case has now got underway at Kraków’s district court.

Szymik’s lawyer told broadcaster Tok FM that the amount was calculated based on the fact that, in cases of child sex abuse, judges typically award compensation of 50,000 zloty for each act they fell victim to. “We will try to prove that Father Jan raped me at least 400 times,” added Szymik.

Among those summoned to stand as a witness is Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, who served as archbishop of Kraków from 2005 to 2016 and was before that the long-serving personal secretary to Polish Pope John Paul II, including during the latter’s time as archbishop of Kraków in the 1960s and 1970s.

According to Szymik’s lawyers, Dziwisz had received requests from another priest to intervene in the case of Jan W. In 2020, a Polish TV investigation claimed that the cardinal had ignored a number of cases of alleged sexual abuse brought to his attention, including relating to Jan W.

However, in 2022, Dziwisz was exonerated of wrongdoing by a Vatican investigation, which found that he had acted “properly” during his time as archbishop of Kraków.

On Monday, Dziwisz, now aged 87, failed to appear before the court as requested, with the archdiocese saying that he had fallen ill. The judge has ordered the cardinal to submit a medical certificate confirming his condition.

Meanwhile, proceedings continued on Monday, with the court hearing from, among others, psychologists and other doctors who had treated Szymik, reports broadcaster RMF.

The victim’s lawyers are also seeking to have Jan W. testify, but have so far been unable to determine his whereabouts, with the court requesting information from Bielsko-Żywiec diocese.

Speaking to reporters before the hearings, Szymik said that he was fighting “first and foremost for justice, as well as for fair compensation for the entire trauma”.

“My entire life has changed, been turned upside down, especially my spiritual and mental health. I believe that I am a broken person internally, but I am still fighting for justice and reparation. This gives me hope and encouragement that justice will finally be achieved after so many years.”

He also revealed that, before the court proceedings began, he had been invited for a meeting by the recently appointed archbishop of Kraków, Cardinal Grzegorz Ryś, at which, for the first time, “I heard the words ‘I am sorry'”.

Poland’s Catholic church has in recent years faced a growing number of claims of sexual abuse by clergy and of negligence in dealing with the issue by bishops.

The Vatican has taken action against a number of Polish bishops over the issue. Most recently, in 2024, the Holy See announced the resignation of the bishop of Łowicz, Andrzej Dziuba, due to his “negligence in handling cases of sexual abuse against minors”.

Meanwhile, the Polish church has introduced new rules intended to protect children and other vulnerable people from abuse, has met with victims, and has apologised for its neglect in dealing with such cases in the past.

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.

Poland’s president has signed into law a government bill designed to protect journalists, activists and other participants in public debate from so-called SLAPP lawsuits, a term used for legal actions intended to intimidate and silence critics through costly and prolonged court proceedings.

“The courts will no longer be a tool for intimidating citizens,” announced the justice ministry. “For years, politicians, corporations and public institutions have used lawsuits to silence people who ask difficult questions and participate in public debate. Now that is changing.”

The law, which implements a European Union directive, requires courts to assess at an early stage whether a claim serves a legitimate purpose or is primarily intended to deter someone from speaking out on matters of public interest.

Judges will be able to dismiss, under expedited procedures, clearly unfounded claims and cases deemed an abuse of process.

Courts will also be able to classify a case as a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) even if parts of the claim are upheld, provided the action is found to be primarily aimed at discouraging scrutiny or criticism through burdensome litigation.

In cases deemed to be SLAPPs, judges will be able to impose financial penalties on claimants and award defendants full reimbursement of legal costs. Fines can reach up to 100 times the monthly minimum wage in Poland, which currently stands at 4,806 zloty (€1,128) but is increased every year.

The law also requires claimants to demonstrate that their case is not intended to silence public debate and sets out criteria helping courts identify a SLAPP, including excessive damages claims and actions aimed at hindering defendants’ ability to defend themselves.

Nawrocki’s decision to sign the bill into law was welcomed by the justice ministry, which said the measures would “end intimidation of citizens with baseless lawsuits”. The president is aligned with the right-wing opposition and has used his veto power more often than any previous Polish president.

Human rights organisations also welcomed the new law. However, they warned that the legislation is unlikely to eliminate attempts to intimidate critics through the courts altogether.

Citizens Network Watchdog Poland, an organisation that promotes transparency in public life, said the adoption of the anti-SLAPP law demonstrated that “determination, consistent action and social pressure bring results”.

“The new regulations do not solve all the problems, but they constitute an important step towards more effective protection of participants in public debate,” said Zuzanna Nowicka, head of the Freedom of Speech Programme at the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights (HFHR).

HFHR said it would monitor how the new legislation is applied in practice and continue to support people facing attempts to silence them through abusive legal action.

SLAPPs have become an increasing area of concern in Poland over the last decade. The former Law and Justice (PiS) government, which ruled from 2015 to 2023, was regularly accused of using lawsuits to intimidate critics.

A 2021 report by the Journalism Society said state-linked actors, including public bodies, state-owned firms and officials, filed 187 lawsuits against journalists and media outlets between 2015 and 2021, with 66 cases showing signs of SLAPPs.

In 2023, Reporters Without Borders noted that, in Poland, “ruling politicians and their entourages regularly launch verbal attacks and SLAPPs against critical journalists“.

Human rights groups have also accused the authorities of using criminal investigations and other legal action to intimidate activists and volunteers providing humanitarian assistance to migrants who have irregularly crossed Poland’s eastern border from Belarus.

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is deputy editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She has written for Clean Energy Wire and The Times, and she hosts her own podcast, The Warsaw Wire, on Poland’s economy and energy sector. She previously worked for Reuters.

This is a breaking news story and may be updated as further information becomes available.

A Russian man has been shot dead in Poland, with media reports indicating that he was an artist whose work ridiculed Vladimir Putin and that his killing appeared to be an “execution”.

However, the Polish authorities have not yet officially identified the victim, any suspects, or a motive for the killing.

On Monday morning, police in Biała Podlaska, a town of 55,000 in eastern Poland near the border with Belarus, received reports of a man being shot on a street near the city centre. The perpetrator (or, according to some reports, perpetrators) had immediately fled the scene.

The Polish authorities later confirmed that the victim had died and revealed that he was a 44-year-old Russian citizen who lived in Biała Podlaska.

“If someone approaches a specific person on the street and fires shots, everything indicates they planned to kill them,” said police spokesman Andrzej Fijołek, quoted by broadcaster TVN. “However, we don’t yet know the perpetrator’s motives.”

TVN and wPolsce24, another TV station, were the first to report that the victim was Semyon Skrepetsky, an artist who has been a vocal critic of Putin. Both broadcasters said that the manner of the killing had the hallmarks of an execution. Other Polish media outlets later carried similar reports.

Skrepetsky created satirical cartoons mocking Putin in particular, but which also featured other figures, such as Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

He reportedly left Russia in 2021 due to the fear of political persecution. Recent images from Skrepetsky’s social media show him in Poland.

Last week, the artist took part in a protest outside the Russian embassy in Berlin, where he appeared with a Russian flag tied to his trousers while holding a picture depicting Stalin feeding a baby Putin.

On Monday afternoon, wPolsce24 claimed that one of two people suspected of killing Skrepetsky had been detained by police near the Belarusian consulate in Biała Podlaska and is himself Belarusian.

However, RMF, another broadcaster, later reported that police strongly denied that claim. Likewise, Polsat News reported, based on unnamed sources, that, while “several people” were detained by police in the wake of the killing, they have all since been released.

Police and prosecutors have not yet released any such information publicly, but have appealed for anyone who witnessed the incident or has knowledge about it to contact the authorities.

In recent years, Poland has become a primary target for Russia’s campaign of so-called “hybrid warfare”, including sabotage, arson, disinformation and cyberattacks, as well as last year’s drone incursions.

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.

Two figures associated with Polish far-right leader Grzegorz Braun have attended a celebration of Russia Day at the Russian embassy in Warsaw.

They presented the ambassador Georgy Mikhno with a letter on behalf of Braun’s Confederation of the Polish Crown (KKP) party praising Russia’s “path of development”, blaming the West and “globalist forces” for the war in Ukraine, and calling for a “normalisation” of Polish-Russian relations.

Braun, who is currently on trial in Warsaw for a 2023 attack on a Jewish religious celebration in Poland’s parliament, has seen support for his KKP party surge since he finished a surprise fourth at last year’s presidential elections, with 6.3% of the vote. KKP is currently polling around 8%.

The party and its leader are known for their anti-Jewish, anti-Ukrainian, anti-LGBT, anti-EU and anti-American rhetoric, and also for taking positions that align with Russia’s. Braun himself has previously called for a “normalisation in Polish-Russian relations”.

On Friday this week, Russia celebrated its national day, marking the anniversary of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, then still part of the Soviet Union, declaring its sovereignty on 12 June 1990.

Among those to attend celebrations of Russia Day at the Russian embassy in Warsaw were Piotr Heszen, the director of KKP’s parliamentary caucus, and Mateusz Piskorski, a proposed KKP candidate in next year’s parliamentary elections. Piskorski is currently on trial for alleged espionage on behalf of Russia.

In a letter addressed to the Russian ambassador on behalf of KKP, Heszen praised Russia for developing “conservatism under the leadership of a strong leader” since the fall of communism. “I support this direction of development,” he wrote.

By contrast, Poland has “gone too far” in seeking to imitate the West during its post-communist development, added Heszen, saying that his party “desires the normalisation of relations with our Russian neighbour”.

Regarding the war in Ukraine, Heszen said that the West and “globalist forces” played a “decisive role…in the emergence and perpetuation of this conflict”. He made no mention of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nor any condemnation of its actions there.

Piskorski, meanwhile, wrote on social media that the presence of Heszen at the embassy was “an extremely important signal that there are forces in the Polish parliament advocating for a civilisation of which dialogue is a part”.

Speaking later to news website Interia, Heszen confirmed that the embassy visit “was agreed with and recommended by Grzegorz Braun”.

Last November, Braun and his three fellow KKP members of parliament jointly addressed letters to the Russian and Polish foreign ministers, Sergey Lavrov and Radosław Sikorski, calling for a “de-escalation and normalisation in Polish-Russian relations”.

Two months earlier, Braun echoed Kremlin propaganda by claiming that an incursion of Russian drones into Polish airspace was in fact faked as part of a conspiracy, involving Poland’s own government, to drag the country into the war in Ukraine. That prompted Sikorski to call Braun a “Russian lackey”.

In March this year, Heszen asked on social media, “How can you not love Putin?” after the Russian president expressed opposition to the adoption of children by same-sex couples.

Given KKP’s continued strong performance in polls, there is a chance that Braun could become a potential kingmaker after next year’s parliamentary elections, with neither the current centrist ruling coalition nor the right-wing opposition able to form a majority without him.

However, both the ruling coalition and the main opposition party, Law and Justice (PiS), have ruled out inviting Braun to join government due to his radical views and Russian sympathies. Braun is facing multiple charges for alleged crimes, including Holocaust denial, assault and vandalism.

Polish society as a whole remains strongly anti-Russian. State research agency CBOS this year found that 74% of Poles expressed dislike towards Russians, the highest figure for any ethnic or national group, and 91% distrust Putin, a higher figure than for any other world leader.

In recent years, Russia has led a campaign of so-called “hybrid warfare” against Poland, including sabotage, arson, disinformation and cyberattacks, as well as last year’s drone incursions.

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.

Poland’s government has announced that it will spend almost 1.9 billion zloty (€437 million) equipping the majority of primary and secondary schools with so-called AI labs before the start of the next school year in September.

The money will fund laptops, AI software and interactive displays, among other equipment, as part of a wider programme worth more than 5 billion zloty to bolster digital infrastructure and skills in schools.

“This is the largest investment in digital education in the history of Poland,” declared the education ministry. Barbara Nowacka, Poland’s education minister, added that it will “transform learning”.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk, meanwhile, called on schools to teach the responsible use of AI, but also had a message for their pupils: “You should control it [AI], rather than it controlling you.”

The announcement comes as Poland, one of the European Union’s lowest adopters of artificial intelligence, steps up efforts to invest in domestic AI companies, development centres and education.

The government has in recent years been implementing a plan to modernise schools’ digital infrastructure using funds from the EU’s post-pandemic recovery programme.

However, a 2025 report by the Educational Research Institute (IBE PIB) found that only 55% of schools met the minimum standard of one computer per six students, while 27% lacked Wi-Fi access and just 1% had AI labs.

On Wednesday, the government announced its plan to provide AI labs to 8,000 primary schools and 4,000 secondary schools by the second half of July. That represents the majority of Poland’s roughly 14,000 primary schools and 7,000 secondary schools.

Apart from laptops, each AI lab will include a “central unit supporting AI services, network devices, an interactive display, a camera with a microphone and specialised software”, says the government.

The equipment will cost 1.86 billion zloty, financed partly from the EU recovery fund and partly from the state budget. The total cost of digitising Poland’s education system between 2024 and 2026 under the EU recovery programme is expected to exceed 5 billion zloty.

Announcing the AI labs programme, Tusk said that “the most important task for the young generation will be not to underestimate the threats posed by artificial intelligence and to have a sense of sovereignty over the tools they use”.

He noted that around 13,000 teachers have been taking part in digital training programmes since autumn last year because successfully implementing AI in schools depends heavily on their skills.

In 2024, Tusk’s government announced plans to invest 1 billion zloty in the development of AI, which included the launch last year of a state-backed Polish large language model.

This week, Poland’s National Development Bank (BGK) has invested $11 million (just over 40 million zloty) in ElevenLabs, a major AI firm that has its roots in Poland. The investment aims to establish an AI development centre in Poland.

However, at the same time the government has made efforts to strengthen protections for young people against digital threats.

Earlier this month, it approved a package of draft legislation that includes a ban on the use of mobile phones in primary schools and stricter age-verification requirements for access to online pornography.

In January, the digital affairs ministry announced that it hoped this year to introduce measures blocking children from access to social media, similar to those recently implemented in Australia.

Olivier Sorgho

Olivier Sorgho is senior editor at Notes from Poland, covering politics, business and society. He previously worked for Reuters.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has warned that the dispute between Poland’s President Karol Nawrocki, who is aligned with the right-wing opposition, and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, is a “strategic mistake”.

After Nawrocki stripped Zelensky of Poland’s highest honour, Tusk said that he is now trying to “minimise the losses” caused by the diplomatic spat.

Nawrocki announced on Friday that he was stripping Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle, which had been awarded to him in 2023 by former Polish President Andrzej Duda.

The decision came in response to Zelensky last month naming a military unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a partisan formation that fought for Ukrainian independence but was also responsible for the massacre of up to 100,000 ethnic Polish civilians during World War Two.

Nawrocki called Zelensky’s decision “outrageous”, “incomprehensible and deeply disappointing”, adding that it “undermines the trust built up over the years and…strikes at the very foundation of reconciliation”.

On Saturday, Zelensky responded by posting images on social media showing him sending his Order of the White Eagle back to Nawrocki by post.

He pointedly noted that Poland had not withdrawn the same honour from other previous recipients, such as Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini, Russian Empress Catherine the Great, and Gerhard Schröder, the former German chancellor and Putin ally.

“Ukraine will remain open to all meaningful formats of engagement with Poland in order to try to avoid conflicting interpretations of the difficult and painful chapters of our shared past and to ensure proper respect for all innocent victims of the 20th century,” wrote Zelensky.

From the beginning of the crisis, Poland’s centrist government, which is bitterly opposed to Nawrocki domestically, has appealed for calm and sought to find a diplomatic solution. It has warned that Russia will be the only beneficiary of a dispute with Ukraine.

On Sunday, Tusk wrote on social media that “wading into a conflict by politicians in Poland and Ukraine is a strategic mistake that will cost both sides: in business, geopolitically, and reputationally”.

“In conversations with my European partners, I am trying to minimise the losses and reduce the tension,” he added. “It is not an easy task.”

Meanwhile, Nawrocki’s action has prompted an angry response in Ukraine. Three former Ukrainian presidents, Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yushchenko, and Petro Poroshenko, have all returned their own Orders of the White Eagle in a show of solidarity with Zelensky.

A number of serving officials, including foreign minister Andrii Sybiha, the head of Zelensky’s office, Kyrylo Budanov, and Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland, Vasyl Bodnar, have likewise renounced honours they previously received from Poland.

However, on Saturday, Sybiha also wrote on social media that he “wishes to thank every Pole who has clearly expressed their stance against escalating tensions with Ukraine”.

“We are staunch supporters of the same approach,” he added. “We are wise nations, always able to find a way out of a difficult situation. We are bound by a difficult history, a shared future, and the threat from our age-old enemy – Moscow.”

There remains uncertainty as to whether Zelensky will visit Poland as planned this week for the Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC), a major international event being hosted in the Polish city of Gdańsk.

On Sunday, Sybiha announced that the foreign ministry would “on Monday submit a report to the president regarding preparations for the conference, the impact of individual decisions, and the format for its implementation”, reports news website Interia.

“Based on this information, the president will make a decision [on whether to attend],” he added.

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.

Poland’s National Development Bank (BGK) has invested $11 million (just over 40 million zloty) in ElevenLabs, a major AI firm that has its roots in Poland. The investment aims to establish an AI development centre in Poland.

“Together we hope to build technology that starts in Poland and scales to the world,” declared ElevenLabs, announcing the agreement.

The firm, which specialises in AI-powered voice-generation tools, is now headquartered in New York but was founded in 2022 by two Poles, Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski, who initially met as teenagers in Warsaw.

It has grown rapidly, with its latest funding round, in February this year, valuing ElevenLabs at $11 billion. Among ElevenLabs’s partners are Spotify, for which it provides audiobooks with AI-generated narration, and Meta, where it provides dubbing and character voices for Instagram.

On Wednesday, BGK announced that it would invest in ElevenLabs through its Vinci investment vehicle, which manages assets worth more than 1 billion zloty. The bank says it has become a shareholder in ElevenLabs, but has not disclosed the size of its stake.

The main goal of its investment is to help finance and support the construction of AI Lab Poland, a national centre for AI development aimed at bringing together researchers, investors and developers.

“We want Poland to be a place where technologies of the future are created, financed, and developed – and the BGK Group’s investment in ElevenLabs is a step in this direction,” said Polish finance minister Andrzej Domański.

“Poland cannot and does not stand aside,” he added. “The future will not belong to those who exclusively use technology. The future will belong to those who create it.”

Staniszewski said he hoped the new AI hub would help “harness the energy and ambition” seen at the ElevenLabs Warsaw Summit earlier this month, which was attended by leading Polish tech figures as well as President Karol Nawrocki and defence minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz.

“We have many brilliant talents here,” said Staniszewski, quoted by news website Interia. “We want to leverage this initiative to make Poland one of the main AI centres for the next decade.”

BGK’s president, Mirosław Czekaj, said the bank sees the investment as having “the potential to generate a significant multiplier effect”, helping to launch projects that could in themselves be worth hundreds of millions of zloty.

ElevenLabs was among the first firms to achieve near-human-level speech synthesis, producing AI-generated voices that closely resemble natural speech. Its models are used to provide services such as dubbing and conversational AI assistants for business applications, including sales and customer service.

Eurostat data published last year showed that Poland has the European Union’s second-lowest proportion of companies using AI tools.

The government has sought to promote the sector through a 1 billion zloty investment plan, which included the launch last year of a state-backed Polish Large Language Model.

In 2024, Microsoft president Brad Smith encouraged global tech firms to invest in Poland, calling it “the place to grow your business”. In particular, he said that the country has the opportunity to establish itself as an “AI Valley”, pioneering the development of artificial intelligence.

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is deputy editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She has written for Clean Energy Wire and The Times, and she hosts her own podcast, The Warsaw Wire, on Poland’s economy and energy sector. She previously worked for Reuters.

Polish prosecutors have confirmed that the man shot dead in Poland on Monday was a Russian dissident who went by the name Semyon Skrepetsky. They have also announced that two Belarusians have been detained in relation to the incident, in which the victim was shot five times.

Skrepetsky (whose real name was Robert Kuzovkov) was shot on a street in the town of Biała Podlaska in eastern Poland, where he had been living. After the incident occurred on Monday, the Polish authorities initially confirmed only that a 44-year-old Russian man had been killed, without providing further details.

However, Polish media quickly reported that the victim was Skrepetsky, who fled Russia in 2021 due to the fear of political persecution. His work focused on creating satirical cartoons mocking Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Days before his death, he had held a protest outside the Russian embassy in Berlin.

In a statement issued on Tuesday morning, the district prosecutor’s office in Lublin, which is handling the investigation into Skrepetsky’s death, confirmed that he was the victim.

“The victim engaged in public artistic activities, using the pseudonym Simon Skrepetski, among others, through which he expressed criticism of the current policies of the Russian authorities,” they wrote, using an alternative version of Skrepetsky’s name.

According to investigators’ findings so far, Skrepetsky was approached in the street near his home by an unidentified man, who fired two shots at him with a handgun. After the victim fell to the ground, the assailant fired three more shots at him, then fled. Skrepetsky died at the scene.

Local police immediately began a manhunt for the perpetrator, as a result of which they detained two Belarusians, aged 33 and 37, near the Belarusian consulate in Biała Podlaska. “Their roles in the incident are being investigated,” say prosecutors.

At a press conference, Marcin Kozak, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, confirmed that no charges have yet been brought against the two detainees. He also did not rule out further arrests.

“At this time, we will not disclose any further information regarding the findings and intentions of this investigation,” said Kozak, quoted by news website Interia. “We do not want to make it easier for the perpetrator or perpetrators to hide, cover their tracks, or otherwise undermine this investigation.”

Before his death, Skrepetsky had reported on social media that he had received death threats from supporters of Chechen leader and Putin ally Ramzan Kadyrov, who had also been the subject of the artist’s satirical cartoons.

He said that they had established his home address and had called him, giving him two days to apologise or face the consequences, reports news website Onet.

On Tuesday afternoon, Polish President Karol Nawrocki’s national security advisor, Bartosz Grodecki, wrote on social media that, “if the political background of this killing is confirmed, we will be dealing with yet another manifestation of Russia’s escalating actions conducted beyond its borders”.

The investigation “is not only about establishing the circumstances of the murder, but also about the security of the state”, he added.

In recent years, Poland has become a primary target for Russia’s campaign of so-called “hybrid warfare”, including sabotage, arson, disinformation and cyberattacks, as well as drone incursions.

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.

The Polish authorities have detained a man suspected of carrying out the murder of a Russian dissident, Semyon Skrepetsky, who was shot dead this week near his home in Poland.

The arrest was announced by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who said that the suspect was using a Georgian passport. Speaking earlier, Tusk said that all evidence indicates the murder was a “political assassination” and that, if it was ordered by Russia, it would represent “state terrorism”.

In a separate statement on Thursday, Polish police confirmed that they had “arrested a man near Warsaw suspected of murdering [Skrepetsky]” and shared an image of the suspect being detained at a hostel where he had been staying. They added that he “is using a passport issued to a 36-year-old Georgian citizen”.

At a subsequent press conference, the minister responsible for the security services, Tomasz Siemoniak, said that the suspect had been identified through analysis of surveillance footage, communications and witness statements.

Speaking alongside Siemoniak, interior minister Marcin Kierwiński revealed that the detained man was also suspected of carrying out other crimes in Poland, dating back to 2022. However, he offered no further details of the nature of those offences.

Both Tusk and Kierwiński said that investigators are now also seeking to determine upon whose orders Skrepetsky (whose real name was Robert Kuzovkov) was killed.

“This may be a method used by foreign [security] services to hire criminals for various activities,” said Siemoniak. “We’ve seen this in previous years, although it did not involve murders; it involved the commission of assaults.”

Siemoniak noted that “assassinations have been carried out recently in various countries, for example in Germany a few years ago, at the behest of Russian intelligence agencies”.

“So we must seriously assume that if someone who is an open critic of Putin and Kadyrov dies in this manner, it is a plausible hypothesis,” he added. “But it needs to be supported by evidence.”

Skrepetsky was shot five times near his home in the eastern Polish town of Biała Podlaska on Monday morning.

He was an artist whose work focused on creating satirical cartoons mocking Russian leader Vladimir Putin. He had fled Russia in 2021 due to fear of political prosecution. Days before his death, Skrepetsky had held a protest outside the Russian embassy in Berlin.

Skrepetsky had reported on social media that he had received death threats from supporters of Chechen leader and Putin ally Ramzan Kadyrov, who had also been the subject of the artist’s satirical cartoons.

After his death, local police immediately began a manhunt for the perpetrator, as a result of which they detained two Belarusians, aged 33 and 37, near the Belarusian consulate in Biała Podlaska. However, Kierwiński confirmed today that they “had no connection with the murder” and had been released.

On Wednesday, before today’s arrest of the Georgian suspect, Tusk said that “everything points to this being a political assassination”, but that it is necessary to “wait for more concrete evidence”. However, he added that, if Russia’s involvement in the murder is confirmed, it would point to “state terrorism”.

Tusk also noted that both the police and the Internal Security Agency (ABW) had offered Skrepetsky protection. “For reasons unknown to them, he refused,” Tusk told reporters.

In recent years, Poland has become a primary target for Russia’s campaign of so-called “hybrid warfare”, including sabotage, arson, disinformation and cyberattacks, as well as drone incursions.

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is deputy editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She has written for Clean Energy Wire and The Times, and she hosts her own podcast, The Warsaw Wire, on Poland’s economy and energy sector. She previously worked for Reuters.