POLAND: NATO Countries’ Summit & more – 26th June 2025

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

Let’s kick off with an update to a story from our previous show. Last week we mentioned that the Supreme Court was flooded with complaints about the recent presidential election. On Monday, the 23rd, Adam Bodnar, Poland’s Justice Minister, said he’ll request a vote recount in up to 1,000 polling stations due to the filing of around 50,000 official complaints. Some have already been accepted, and there’s an investigation into possible election fraud in a few towns.

Roman Giertych, an MP from the ruling Civic Coalition, wants a full criminal investigation and a physical check of all ballots, saying the vote was rigged. Senator Krzysztof Kwiatkowski, also from the ruling party, is calling for a full recount, saying the pro-European candidate Rafał Trzaskowski lost hundreds of thousands of votes unfairly.

On the other hand, politicians such as Szymon Hołownia, the Sejm Speaker from the Poland twenty fifty Party, and Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, the Deputy PM from the Polish People's Party, are against delaying the new president’s start and doing a full recount.

Switching gears to defense, on Friday, the 20th, EU finance ministers gave Poland the green light to use about six billion dollars from its pandemic recovery fund for security and defense, instead of the original plan to spend it on economic recovery projects after the pandemic. This makes Poland the first EU country to use recovery money for military purposes.

The funds will go towards things like upgrading arms factories, improving energy grids, building civil-defense shelters, and fixing important transport links.

The Defense Ministry said Poland actually needs much more for defense, over twenty-one billion dollars. So, this new fund is just the starting point to strengthen the military and security.

They expect the first projects, such as upgrading arms factories and building shelters, to start around twenty twenty-six.

Still on defense, on Tuesday, the 24th, President Andrzej Duda took part in the two-day NATO summit in The Hague, the Netherlands, which focused on boosting NATO countries’ defense to handle growing threats from Russia and the Middle East.

Duda said NATO members need to spend five percent of their GDP on defense, and he believes going back to Cold War-level budgets would be a real game-changer.

On top of that, he wants to change Poland’s constitution to make sure defense spending never falls below four percent of its GDP.

Soon after, NATO countries signed a deal to spend five percent of their GDP on defense. Duda thanked all NATO members for backing this decision on Twitter.

On Wednesday, the 25th, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said that Norway will send F-35 jets again to help patrol Polish airspace, as Russian planes have been violating NATO airspace more often around the Baltic Sea. He also announced that Germany will keep its Patriot missile systems in Poland until the end of twenty twenty-five, and that Poland will soon be hosting an Australian AWACS plane that helps spot and track threats from the air.

Kosiniak-Kamysz also said there will be a major military exercise in September called Operation Iron Defender, involving Poland’s 18th Mechanised Division, along with troops from the US, Turkey, Finland, Canada, and Slovakia. It’s meant to show NATO’s strength, especially since Russia will hold exercises in Belarus around the same time.

He also met with defence officials from France, Germany, Italy, and the UK to talk about helping Ukraine and the situation in the Middle East.

Next up, on Saturday, the 21st, the Belarusian government released fourteen political prisoners, including three Poles and Siarhei Tsikhanouski, the husband of the Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.

Siarhei was freed after five years in a Belarusian prison. The Belarusian government arrested him in twenty twenty when he tried to run for president, and Sviatlana took his place before having to leave the country following a disputed election.

Tsikhanouskaya thanked Radosław Sikorski, Poland’s Foreign Minister, for helping secure the release and urged everyone to keep pushing for the freedom of those still imprisoned, especially Andrzej Poczobut, a Polish-Belarusian journalist arrested for calling for sanctions against Belarus, reporting on protests and defending the Polish minority.

Sikorski responded that Poland is still working hard to free all remaining political prisoners.

Also on Saturday, Polish historians joined a remote round table with Ukraine to talk about shared WWII history and how to handle sensitive issues between the countries.

Andrii Sybiha, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister, warned that some Polish politicians are twisting history for political gain, which hurts the country's relations and helps Russia. He praised Poland’s strong support since the Russian invasion but said that one-sided takes on history could break that unity. He stressed the need for honest, respectful talks based on facts.

Ukraine recently allowed Poland to dig up war graves at two sites—Zboiska, where 300 Polish soldiers died fighting Nazis in nineteen thirty-nine, and Puźniki, where many ethnic Poles were killed in nineteen forty-five. These digs aim to promote healing.

Ukraine also wants to restart a historians’ forum and a bigger partnership to fight fake news, prevent conflicts, and help both sides understand their shared history better.

Meanwhile, from Monday, the 23rd to Thursday, the 26th, Warsaw hosted the World Justice Forum, organized with the help of Poland’s Justice Ministry.

The main goal was to discuss ways to limit the government’s control and to support systems like independent courts, anti-corruption agencies, election commissions, and human rights organizations that aim to keep leaders honest and fair.

Participants of the event included judges, journalists, activists, election officials, private sector leaders, and young activists from around the world. They shared ideas, discussed how technology and environmental challenges impact governments, and worked together to find new ways to hold leaders accountable.

Let’s go back to the EU for a second. On Friday, the 20th, the University of Technology in Łódź, in central Poland, gave Roberta Metsola, the European Parliament President, an honorary degree to celebrate her work promoting European unity, showing courage during tough times, like wars, and supporting democracy and teamwork across the EU.

On the same day, during a big event called the Great European Picnic, Metsola and 228 people in Łódź broke Poland’s record for the largest group singing of the EU anthem, Ode to Joy. The event focused on celebrating EU values and highlighting how EU funding benefits Poland.

Though briefly, a small group of nationalist protesters from the All-Polish Youth organization showed up, waving a banner with anti-EU slogans supporting a national Poland.

On a positive note, on Wednesday, the 25th, Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, a Polish astronaut, took off to space on the AX-4 mission alongside American, Indian, and Hungarian crew members, becoming the second person from Poland to have ever gone to space.

He launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and reached the International Space Station the next day. He’ll spend around two weeks there doing dozens of science experiments in fields such as medicine, biology, and new technology.

PM Tusk watched the launch from Warsaw with a group of students, saying he was proud and hoping everything would go smoothly.

And to wrap up this episode, on Tuesday, the 24th, the BBC launched BBC News Polska, a new Polish-language site to help fight fake news in Poland.

It’s the BBC’s first project to use AI for translating news, but editors will always check the translations to keep them accurate.

The service is starting as a one-year trial, sharing news in both text and videos about topics like ongoing wars, health, climate change, and the rising cost of living.

You can find the link to the site in the show notes.

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

Want to join our team as the Ocean Update writer?

Reach out to info@rorshok.com with “Ocean Writer Position” in the subject and a short note on why you're excited to be a part of the team.

Don’t miss the full job description—link’s in the show notes!

Do zobaczenia!