POLAND: Fighter Jets-Drone Exchange & more – 12th Feb 2026

Witam from BA! This is the Rorshok Poland Update from the 12th of February twenty twenty-six. A quick summary of what's going down in Poland.

Let’s kick off with updates on security. On Tuesday, the 10th, NATO announced that a Polish general will lead a joint headquarters for the first time ever.

General Sławomir Wojciechowski will take command of Joint Force Command Brunssum in the Netherlands, replacing Ingo Gerhartz, the German General, who has run it since June, twenty twenty-five.

NATO agreed to give European allies bigger roles in top military positions, and the US said it will continue supporting the alliance.

The new commander will take over in July while similar NATO Commands in Naples, Italy, and Norfolk, the US, will shift to European leaders, with the US keeping control of smaller operational units.

To know more about this story, check out the link in the show notes!

More on security, as on Thursday, the 5th, Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister, visited Kyiv and said Poland is ready to send its MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine in exchange for Ukrainian drones. He and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian President, discussed the swap to help Ukraine protect its skies from Russian attacks. Zelenskyy said Ukraine is ready for the exchange and may also ask for missiles.

Tusk will check with Poland’s military leaders to figure out the fastest way to help and will update Zelenskyy on what's possible. Poland and Ukraine also signed a letter of intent to expand defence cooperation, including making ammo and military gear together and developing defence technology.

Also on Thursday, the 5th, President Karol Nawrocki defended Adam Andruszkiewicz, his deputy chief of staff, after prosecutors called him in as a suspect in a case tied to forged signatures from the twenty fourteen local elections. Back then, Andruszkiewicz led the ultra-conservative All-Polish Youth movement, whose candidates used fake signatures to register for the election. He has to show up before prosecutors on the 11th of February.

Nawrocki said the move is politically motivated, questioning why prosecutors are pushing the case now after more than a decade, and suggested that earlier expert opinions didn’t justify any charges.

Andruszkiewicz, now a Law and Justice politician, rejected the accusations and said the investigation was political revenge. He added that the current government is targeting the presidential office.

Remember that last week we mentioned that Włodzimierz Czarzasty, the Parliamentary Speaker, said he wouldn’t support a Nobel Peace Prize for Trump, arguing he doesn’t deserve it? Well, on Thursday, the 5th, Tom Rose, the US ambassador to Poland, cut all ties with Czarzasty, saying he insulted US President Trump without reason.

Rose announced the embassy will stop all contacts with Czarzasty, saying he’s now a problem for US relations with Poland’s government under Tusk.

The Polish president’s office, a Trump ally, also suggested Czarzasty might have connections to Russia. Czarzasty denied it and said he had nothing to hide.

On another update, on Wednesday, the 11th, PM Tusk said Poland won’t join the Peace Council set up by US President Trump because it is not clear how the council will work, what powers it has, or what it aims to do, especially since its main focus so far seems to be rebuilding Gaza.

Tusk said that Poland wants international projects with clear rules, legal frameworks, and widely agreed goals.

He added that Poland keeps its relationship with the US as a top priority and may join the council later if its structure and purpose become more defined.

Switching gears to local updates. On Tuesday, the 10th, the group trying to recall Aleksander Miszalski, the mayor of Kraków (southern Poland) and a member of the Civic Coalition, said they’ve already collected over 40,000 signatures in just two weeks.

They’ve got forty-five more days to hit their target of 100,000. While the campaign says it’s non-political, opponents like the Law and Justice party, the Confederation party, and the local political group Kraków for Residents are helping out.

Critics accuse Miszalski of city debt, nepotism, sloppy audits, broken promises, and unprofessional behavior, like dancing on the city hall roof to a song with vulgar language.

Miszalski calls it a political rematch and brags about higher city income, local projects, and better transport after his election win.

Next up, on Monday, the 9th, the Polish delivery company InPost announced that investors are buying the company and will pay about eighteen dollars and ninety cents for each share.

The deal values InPost at around eight billion dollars, about fifty percent higher than its price on the 2nd of January.

InPost will keep running independently after the deal, under its own brand, with headquarters and key staff in Poland, and work with FedEx on a fair, market-based partnership to help expand its reach.

Following that, on Tuesday, the 10th, the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection charged Meta Platforms Ireland, which handles Facebook and Instagram in Europe, for making it difficult for users to reach the platform's representatives directly by phone or email if they have any problems.

The agency said that users need quick, direct support for problems like hacked accounts, payment disputes, or losing access to services.

Facebook and Instagram route users to help centers and online forms instead of offering email or phone contacts. These forms often handle only certain issues, prevent real dialogue, and don’t give users copies of their submissions, making complaints hard to track.

In business news, on Tuesday, the 10th, Bytom, southern Poland, kicked off the Premises to Start program, giving about ninety commercial spaces to people starting a business or planning to open one. Rent is just one złoty, twenty-eight US cents, per square meter (eleven square feet) for the first three years.

The program is open to both locals and people from outside Bytom who have a good business idea but limited funds.

The Bytom District Labor Office will also grant up to 48,000 złoty (about 13,500 dollars), which businesses can use to set up or equip the space.

Applicants need to show a business plan, relevant experience, financing details, possible job creation, and proof that they don’t owe the city anything.

What’s new on the agricultural front? On Monday, the 9th, the Agency for Restructuring and Modernization of Agriculture said livestock farmers can get some of their animal insurance money back. It covers cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, horses, or poultry kept on owned land, as long as farmers took out the insurance on or after the 1st of January, twenty twenty-four.

Applications are open from the 9th of February to the 10th of March. Farmers can get back up to seventy percent of their insurance cost, but only if the policy pays out when losses are more than twenty percent, and only if they have at least the minimum required number of animals.

This is the third round, and the earlier rounds gave nearly eleven million zloty, roughly three million dollars, to farmers.

On Friday, the 6th, the Polish Olympic Committee and the Ministry of Sport revealed the rewards for the Winter Olympics winners.

Polish athletes who win gold will get a big prize, including over one million zloty, roughly 250,000  dollars, in cash, a car, a flat, and even cryptocurrency tokens, with the government paying part of the cash in instalments over two years.

Silver and bronze medallists will get smaller cash and cryptocurrency token rewards, and those finishing fourth to eighth will also receive prizes.

Team event winners will get cash, tokens, and one-bedroom flats, with rewards given individually rather than split.

To wrap up, on Thursday, the 5th, journalist and publicist Adam Szabelak wrote in Polish in the online opinion and commentary platform Nowy Ład about the different ways Poland and Sweden prepare citizens for emergencies.

Poland mostly asks people to help themselves, sending out safety guides and suggesting keeping some basic supplies at home. Sweden, on the other hand, makes it everyone’s job by assigning each citizen a role in national preparedness, such as schools teaching kids emergency skills, employers training workers, and every household keeping basic supplies.

Szabelak pointed out that Poland’s approach is short-term and reactive, focused on getting through a few days, while Sweden gets people ready to handle a longer stretch on their own.

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

For those who may want to find out if we get any of these updates going again, go to https://rorshok.com/updates/ (That's Rorshok.com slash Updates). It's also in the show notes. There, you can give us your email address, and we will let you know if anything changes. And of course, you can always just send us an email to info@rorshok.com and let us know to keep you informed. But most of all, thanks for the outpouring of support.

Do zobaczenia!