POLAND: New Defense Equipment & more – 18th Sep 2025

Witam from BA! This is the Rorshok Poland Update from the 18th of September twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Poland.

In the aftermath of last week’s Russian drones entering Polish airspace, on Monday, the 15th, the UK government announced that it will send RAF Typhoon jets to fly over Poland to help defend the skies as part of NATO’s Eastern Guard mission.

Keir Starmer, the UK Prime Minister, said sending the jets is the right move against Russia’s growing aggression. The Typhoons will join other NATO jets, like Danish F-16s, French Rafales, and German Eurofighters, to help protect the eastern border.

Polish officials welcomed the support, saying the move strengthens NATO’s eastern flank and boosts Poland’s air defense capabilities.

Speaking of security, on Tuesday, the 16th, Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced at the Central Air Force Range in Ustka, a small town in northern Poland, that the country will buy new submarines for the navy by the end of twenty twenty-five to boost defenses after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Orca program, Poland’s long-term submarine plan, will likely bring in three new submarines to replace the old ones and the retired Kobben-class boats.

Seven companies from South Korea, France, Spain, Germany, Sweden, and Italy submitted bids. The government will choose the final contractor based on the cost, the Navy's requirements, and how much of the production they can carry out in Poland.

The new submarines will dive more than 200 meters or 600 feet, stay at sea for thirty days without support, fire torpedoes at ships and submarines, and launch missiles capable of hitting both land and sea targets.

Switching gears to new laws, on Friday, the 12th, the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, passed a law introducing a heating bonus for households using central heating for the second half of twenty twenty-five and the whole of twenty twenty-six. It also extended the electricity price freeze at 500 złoty (about 140 dollars) per megawatt-hour, for the last quarter of twenty twenty-five.

To receive the full bonus, one-person households should bring in 200 złoty, about 900 dollars, per month, or less, while multi-person households should bring in 2,400 złoty, about 600 dollars, per person per month or less. Households exceeding these limits will get less money.

The government expects to spend around 900 million złoty, about 250 million dollars, on the heating bonus and electricity price freeze by the end of twenty twenty-six. The new law aims to help households and start bringing down electricity prices next year.

On Monday, the 15th, Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, visited Warsaw and met with Radosław Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister. They signed a deal to restart Polish poultry exports to China.

China stopped buying poultry from Poland in twenty twenty because of bird flu, allowed it again for two years, and then blocked it once more in twenty twenty-four.

The new deal brings in a regionalization rule, so that if bird flu shows up in one area, only that area’s farms are blocked, not the whole country’s. This means others can keep exporting even if there are local outbreaks. Getting back into China is a big win for Poland’s poultry industry, since China is one of the world’s biggest buyers.

Wang Yi's last visit to Warsaw was in twenty nineteen.

Following that, on Tuesday, the 16th, President Nawrocki met with the German President and German Chancellor in Berlin. They talked about war reparations from Nazi Germany, with Nawrocki saying they were never fully settled legally and that Germany should pay Poland, possibly by boosting Poland’s military and NATO’s eastern border. He urged all Polish political groups to stay united on this.

Then the president went to Paris, where he met his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron. They discussed security issues, and Nawrocki thanked Macron for sending three Rafale jets to Poland.

They also talked about the EU-Mercosur deal, a trade agreement between the EU and some South American countries, with Nawrocki saying it could hurt European farmers because cheaper South American products would enter the EU, and Russia and Belarus might indirectly benefit from selling on markets opened up by this shift.

Also on Tuesday, the 16th, Mariusz Gierszewski, an investigative journalist from Radio ZET, shared that Israeli security had asked Polish airports not to show flight information from Israel after a Free Palestine protest at Katowice Airport. During the protest, a young Palestinian woman held up a sign, which sparked concerns about safety and potential provocations. Katowice Airport went along with the request and stopped displaying some arrivals from Tel Aviv, but Warsaw Chopin Airport refused.

Airport officials said that even if flight information isn’t on the boards, people can still track flights online through services like Flightradar. In fact, trying to hide the flights might raise criticism for doing something secretive.

Let’s get back to security for a minute. On Monday, the 15th, Poland’s interior ministry released a safety guide telling households to prepare seventy-two-hour grab-and-go bags in case of sudden evacuation.

The bags should include water, first-aid supplies, medications, basic hygiene items, important documents, cash, and essential tools like flashlights, radios, phones with chargers, and multitools.

They also suggest packing ready-to-eat food, weather-appropriate clothes, masks, a sleeping bag, a map, and one personal item, like a photo, to make things a bit more comforting in an emergency.

The guide also explains Poland’s alarm system and includes basic first-aid, tips for hazards like fires or floods, emergency numbers, and what citizens and authorities should do in case of a war.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday the 16th, Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski, the first Polish astronaut who recently visited the International Space Station, announced that he will tour Poland. From the 15th of October to the 19th of December, he will visit seventeen cities, giving lectures, leading workshops, and showcasing tech demos to inspire students and young people to pursue careers in the space sector.

He will travel with scientists who worked on the International Space Station experiments, and they will stream some events online. Universities are now saying that thanks to Uznański-Wiśniewski, more students are interested in studying engineering, and the government plans to increase funding for the European Space Agency.

In sports news, on Monday, the 15th, Iga Świątek, Poland’s most famous professional tennis player, launched her foundation with a scholarship program for promising young athletes.

Teens and young adults aged fifteen to twenty-two who compete in Olympic sports at the national level can apply, and up to five winners will get coaching from Świątek’s team plus nearly 500,000 zloty, around 140,000 dollars, for training, equipment, and competition preparation.

Świątek said the project lets her use her experience and fame to support young talent and make a positive impact both in sports and beyond.

On another program supporting youth, on Tuesday, the 16th, Radosław Sikorski and Henryka Mościcka-Dendys, Deputy FM, attended the Poland Business Adventure gala at Warsaw’s Royal Castle. The event marked the launch of an ambitious new program bringing 100 talented young people of Polish descent from Europe, the UK, the US, and Canada to take part in three-month internships at forty-eight leading Polish companies.

The Foreign Ministry and the Polish Investment and Trade Agency created the initiative to help the interns’ careers while strengthening their ties with Poland’s business world and cultural heritage. At the gala, officials awarded certificates to interns and partner companies and announced plans to expand the program to even more members of the global Polish diaspora.

Finishing off this edition with some entertainment news, on Monday the 15th, Warsaw’s Oscar committee, led by producer Ewa Puszczyńska, picked Agnieszka Holland’s film Franz Kafka, as Poland’s entry for the Best International Feature Oscar.

The film shows Franz Kafka, a modernist writer known for dark, surreal fiction, focusing on his personal struggles and his influence as a major 20th-century writer, while showing how his fears and anxieties are still relevant to young people today.

The Oscars will take place on the 15th of March, twenty twenty-six, and the film will hit Polish cinemas on the 24th of October, twenty twenty-five.

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

Don’t forget that we do many other updates. We’ve got country and non-country updates, including the Arctic, Ocean, and Multilateral shows.

Check the full list with the link in the show notes.

Do zobaczenia!