POLAND: Duda’s UN Speech & more – 26th Sep 2024

Witam from BA! This is the Rorshok Poland Update from the 26th of September twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Poland.

Let’s start this edition with some news on foreign affairs. On Saturday, the 21st, President Andrzej Duda went to the US and participated in the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. This year, it was called The Summit of the Future, as the UN wanted to emphasize dangers of the future such as increasing wars and climate change.

Duda warned about Russian aggression and said that as a permanent member of the Security Council of the United Nations, Russia should uphold the Charter of the United Nations and international law and stop its invasion of Ukraine. During his visit, Duda also met with top leaders of several countries, such as Kuwait and Armenia, to talk about bilateral relations and other topics in the political sphere.

Speaking of Russia, on Saturday, the 21st, police detained a Belarusian and six Polish nationals who attacked one of the members of the Russian opposition in exile in Poland. In March, a group of people beat Leonid Volkov, a Russian opposition member in exile. Since the Putin regime does not allow any opposition in Russia, the opposition members had to migrate to democratically friendly countries such as Poland.

The people responsible for the beating will face a judicial investigation for serving the Putin regime and Russian intelligence service, and they might receive several years of imprisonment.

On Friday, the 20th, Radosław Sikorski, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, said that Poland will do everything to avoid becoming a colony of Russia again, in a lecture at Johns Hopkins University in Washington. He talked about the time when Poland lost its independence a couple of times to neighboring countries such as Russia and Germany. He said that now that Poles knew the value of independence, they would fight hard this time not to lose it in a war.

He also added that the government is currently spending four percent of its GDP on the military, and it will increase it to almost five percent in the next year. According to the World Bank, there are only a couple of countries that spend more than four percent of their GDP on the army, such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Azerbaijan.

In more news about conflict, on Wednesday, the 25th, Wladysław Kosiniak, the Minister of Defense, spoke about the military conflict in Lebanon where Israel recently increased attacks to eliminate Hezbollah, the Iranian terrorist group. Kosiniak said that Poland currently has 250 soldiers stationed in Lebanon as part of a United Nations peacekeeping mission and that the ministry put them on high alert after the escalation of the conflict. Kosiniak also added that the government is considering every scenario including withdrawing the soldiers from Lebanon.

On Friday, the 20th, Szymon Hołownia, the speaker of the parliament, visited Turkey for three days and met with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan. Hołownia said Poland wants to enhance the bilateral relations with Turkey, which had been stagnant. They agreed that countries would co-produce unmanned military vehicles. Earlier in twenty twenty-three, Poland bought several unmanned military vehicles from Turkey in an effort to increase its inventory. Also, leaders discussed the Israel-Palestinian war and the difficult situation in Gaza. At the end of his trip, Hołownia visited İncirlik air base, in the eastern part of Turkey, where NATO and Polish soldiers are located.

Previously, in twenty twenty-three, the government started an investigation after finding out that a group of administrations in the foreign ministry issued Polish visas to third-world citizens improperly. They sold Polish visas through intermediary companies for people who are normally not eligible for Polish visas. After the new government took power in late twenty twenty-three, they decided to investigate the incident even further and established a commission in the parliament.

On Monday, the 23rd, Poland's Supreme Audit Office declared that the previous Law and Justice administration issued 366,000 visas to citizens of Muslim and African countries during its rule, and most of them were basically sold to immigrants.

Prime Minister Tusk criticized Law and Justice on Twitter and said that when Polish border guards were risking their lives to protect Poles from the wave of illegal migration, the Law and Justice government allowed 366,000 people from Asia and Africa to enter, many of them through bribes.

Following the second-largest flood in Poland's history —which we reported on last week—, on Wednesday, the 25th, the military announced the Phoenix operation. The army sent 26,000 soldiers to flood affected cities to clear away garbage and sludge, pump out water, and dry buildings. Authorities said the most severe situation was in Głuchołazy, a town in the southwest of Poland, and it will take years to restore the city to its previous state.

On Thursday, the 19th, Tusk hosted a big flood summit in the city of Wrocław, Poland. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission and prime ministers of flood-affected countries including the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Austria, attended the event. Von der Leyen said that the EU will give ten billion dollars to flood-affected countries. She didn’t specify how much Poland would receive, but the government expects no less than two billion dollars.

On a similar note, the Polish football association appealed to the Union of European Football Associations or UEFA to issue financial aid to affected sports clubs. The association said that the flood partly or fully damaged hundreds of sports facilities in the country.

On that note about financial help, two weeks ago, we reported that the National Electoral Commission decided to cut three million dollars worth of political subsidies from the Law and Justice party because it used some of its election funds for personal gains.

On Tuesday, the 24th, the Law and Justice filed lawsuits to the District Prosecutor's Office in Warsaw against the members of the National Electoral Commission, saying that the decision was politically motivated and against the law. The party also appealed to the Supreme Court, the highest court in Poland.

In cultural updates, on Tuesday, the 24th, British online banking agency Aqua included The Wawel Royal Castle in Kraków to the list of the ten best monuments in Europe that everyone should visit at least once. The Wawel castle ranked fourth, while the Alhambra, a masterpiece of Spanish architecture, was in the top spot. The Wawel Royal Castle, whose beginnings can be traced to the 14th century, is the most important historic site in Poland. A former residence of Polish kings and the symbol of Polish statehood, the castle has one of the country’s finest collections of national memorabilia and works of art, including Italian Renaissance paintings, Flemish tapestries, and Oriental tents.

And to wrap up this edition, on Wednesday, the 25th, Lublin, a town in the east of the country, And to wrap up this edition, on Wednesday, the 25th, Lublin, a town in the east of the country, is the European Capital of Culture for twenty twenty-nine. The European Capital of Culture is a title awarded annually to cities in Europe to promote their cultural development and highlight the diversity of European cultures. Lublin was competing with two cities from Sweden and three other cities in Poland.

Thanks to this prize, Lublin will receive a special fund from the European Union, and the city will be able to develop itself even further. The city will organize special events with the sponsorship from the EU about its cultural heritage and tourism.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

Thanks for sticking around for this episode of the Rorshok Poland update! If you’ve got questions, thoughts, or just want to say hi, reach out at info@rorshok.com. Don’t forget to hit subscribe on your favorite podcast app!

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