POLAND: Interpol & more – 6th Jun 2024

Witam from BA! This is the Rorshok Poland Update from the 6th of June twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Poland.

Let’s start off with the country’s security. Recall that last month, Tomasz Szmydt, a former Polish judge, escaped to Belarus, and Poland started an investigation for espionage crimes against him. Authorities previously stated that Szmydt had access to sensitive state information, and that he was sharing it with Belarus and Russia at the expense of Poland. To catch him, the Polish Police asked Interpol to issue a red alert. However, Interpol declined the country's request because it considered that Poland was dealing with a political crime, and Interpol does not have the authority to act upon this kind of crime. The country also asked the EU to arrest Szmydt if he entered EU countries.

On another security-related incident, on Wednesday, the 5th, Krzysztof Krajewski, the Polish Ambassador to Russia, visited the local Polish diaspora in the city of Yekaterinburg, where Russian propagandists confronted him.

One Polish citizen, who previously fled to Belarus after authorities charged him with serving Russian intelligence, verbally attacked Krajewski. Luckily, the members of Poland's State Protection Service stopped the attackers when they tried to approach the ambassador.

Krajewski said that Russia does not provide enough security, and the country supports these kinds of activities to prevent him from returning to Poland. Poles online criticized the government for not withdrawing the ambassador to Russia since Russia accelerated its hybrid war on Poland with its spies.

Still on security, in our previous show, we talked about an illegal immigrant who stabbed a Polish border guard with a hand-made spear. Well, there was another incident last week, as on Friday, 31st of May, two more soldiers were injured after a group of immigrants attacked Polish border guards with dangerous materials when they were trying to sneak into Poland from Belarus. Last week, before these incidents, Prime Minister Tusk said that the government thought of reopening one border crossing with Belarus so that Poles conducting trade with Belarus would be relieved. However, Radosław Sikorski, the foreign minister, said that the government gave up the idea. On the contrary, it decided to create a buffer zone on the Belarusian border so that people and reporters would no longer be able to approach the border.

There was also another kind of attack on Friday. The Polish Press Agency, or PAP, the country’s main national news agency, experienced a cyberattack. A group of hackers infiltrated PAP's website and published two fake news stories. One piece of news was about Tusk saying that Poland would mobilize 200,000 citizens to give military training and send them to Ukraine. The PAP news agency recovered their systems within twenty minutes before hackers did any more damage. Authorities, including Tusk, accused Russia of organizing the attack. He said these attempts were to destabilize Poland and the EU before the European Parliamentary elections that will take place on Sunday the 9th. The EU and US state departments offered their support to strengthen Poland’s cyber security and find the perpetrators.

On that note about European parliament elections, on Monday the 3rd, Kaczyński, the president of the Law and Justice Party, called on people to attend the European Parliament elections on Sunday the 9th and vote for nationalistic parties to stop the EU’s Green Deal and Migration Pact. Kaczyński visited Brussels, the capital of the EU, to show solidarity with protesting farmers who are against the Green Deal. In terms of immigration, recall that Prime Minister Tusk previously stated that the EU would not force Poland to take immigrants from other EU members. However, when discussing the topic in Brussels, Kaczyński said that the EU would secretly force Poland to allow the entry of EU migrants.

Because of his visit to Brussels, Kaczyński didn’t attend a parliamentary commission hearing on the visa incident that took place in twenty twenty-two. The current administration said that the Law and Justice Government asked for money from citizens of third-world countries to grant them visas, even though the immigrants were not eligible to get Polish visas. The commission asked the court to fine Kaczyński for not attending the hearing.

On Friday, the 31st of May, Prime Minister Tusk said that the previous Law and Justice government members, including President Andrzej Duda, may face the same fate as Donald Trump, the former US President, as the court found him guilty of forgery of business records in the US. The current administration thinks that Law and Justice is involved in crimes such as using the Pegasus Spyware against opposition politicians. The investigation into these claims continues in parliament. Tusk emphasized that Polish politicians should learn lessons from Trump’s case.

The PM is not the only one criticizing the president. On Saturday, the 1st, Nowacka, the minister of education, heavily criticized President Duda’s veto of the parliament's decision to recognize Silesian as a language. She called Duda a shallow man and said that the government currently works on allocating more money to support non-governmental organizations that work on preserving Silesian language and culture.

Grzegorz Braun, a far-right Confederation Party MP, was in the news again. Recall that last year, he made the headlines after he extinguished Hanukkah candles, used to celebrate a Jewish holiday, in the parliament because he thought they were satanic.

Well, on Tuesday, the 4th, he was involved in another incident. At the beginning of the week, police started to look for a person who stole the Ukrainian flag waving next to the Polish flag in Kościuszko Mound. In the end, MP Braun admitted to stealing the flag because it was in the ‘wrong place’, meaning that he wanted only the Polish flag to be present on the scene. The Kościuszko Mound Committee said they would start an official complaint to start an investigation into the MP. In Poland, it is very common to see Ukrainian flags next to Polish flags nearly everywhere, as the country shows solidarity.

On a positive note, on Tuesday, the 4th, US aerospace giant Boeing announced that they will expand their operations in Poland and provide several hundred new job opportunities for everyone living in the country. The new jobs will be available at Boeing facilities in Warsaw, the Baltic port city of Gdańsk, and the southeastern city of Rzeszów. The job areas will include civil and defense projects, such as structural and software engineering. The CEO of Boeing said that Poland is home to essential skilled people needed for engineering projects and that the country has developed itself in science and research.

In unrelated news, parents want the government to ban the sale of small bottles of strong alcohol, known as monkeys. On Saturday, the 1st, the Institute for Social Research and Markets published a survey that included 1,100 people from eighteen to seventy years old. Forty-six percent support the ban on monkeys. However, sixty-two percent of the people between eighteen and thirty are against this move. Older people think that these practical bottles of strong alcohol are harmful to their children.

In cultural updates, on Thursday, the Energy Camerimage International Film Festival announced that Cate Blanchett, the famous Hollywood actress, will become the jury president for the 32nd edition of their event. The festival will take place from the 16th to the 23rd of November in Toruń, and it will focus on the art of cinematography in international movies.

More on films, as on Wednesday, the 5th, Hollywood director Darren Aronofsky received Polish citizenship. The fifty-five-year-old director, known for his hits Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan, and The Whale, previously stated that he has a Polish origin and that his parents always wanted him to be a Polish citizen one day. Last week, Hollywood actor Jesse Eisenberg also applied for Polish citizenship, as he also has Polish origins.

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

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