POLAND: Railroad Sabotage Incidents & more – 20th Nov 2025

Witam from BA! This is the Rorshok Poland Update from the 20th of November twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Poland.

Let’s kick off with updates on security. On Sunday, the 16th, police discovered two sabotage incidents on the Warsaw–Lublin train line. An explosion blew up part of the track near the village of Mika in east-central Poland, and officials said it was likely meant to blow up a train. In the other incident, further down the line, another train with 475 passengers broke because the tracks were damaged, with the rails bent and misaligned.

The US thinks this is part of Russia’s Phase Zero plan to shake up Europe and weaken NATO. They said Russia isn’t openly attacking NATO yet, but these actions could continue for years.

Polish authorities launched a terrorism investigation linked to foreign intelligence and held an emergency security meeting with military and intelligence chiefs.

Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister, said investigators caught two Ukrainians working for Russian intelligence and will raise the railway security alert.

As a result of the sabotage, on Wednesday, the 19th, Poland’s Foreign Ministry announced the closing of Russia’s last consulate in Gdańsk, a northern port city on the Baltic Sea.

Poland had already shut Russian consulates in Kraków (southern Poland) and Poznań, in the west, after earlier sabotage cases, but will keep the embassy in Warsaw open, without fully breaking diplomatic ties.

Meanwhile, on Monday, the 17th, Polish artillery from the 1st Mazurian Artillery Brigade joined the Northern Strike 225 exercises in Rovaniemi, Finland. A brigade from Kainuu, located in eastern Finland near the Russian border, is running the drills with around 2,200 soldiers and 500 vehicles.

Polish forces brought their Homar rocket launchers to test artillery firepower with allies in tough early-winter conditions.

This milestone marks the first time Poland has prepared its Homar-K launchers for air transport.

Switching gears to internal affairs. On Monday, the 17th, prosecutors called in Tadeusz Rydzyk, the Catholic priest who controls some conservative media outlets such as Radio Maryja and Telewizja Trwam through Lux Veritatis, his foundation.

Prosecutors are investigating whether Rydzyk’s foundation mishandled public funds for the Memory and Identity Museum, which the foundation manages.

Some contracts and funding deals favored his foundation over the state, and critics say Rydzyk used the museum project to make money and get extra resources for his foundation by overcharging and favorable contract terms. His close ties to the opposition Law and Justice Party might have helped him do this.

Rydzyk, on the other hand, says the investigation is an attempt to shut down his media outlets and attack the Catholic community.

Next up, on Tuesday, the 18th, the National Prosecutor’s Office canceled the diplomatic passport of Zbigniew Ziobro, the former Justice Minister and Law and Justice Party MP.

Last week, prosecutors asked a Warsaw court to detain him for three months over twenty-six charges tied to misuse of the Justice Fund.

Ziobro is now in Budapest and hasn’t said if he’ll seek political asylum or return to Poland. Authorities want to stop him from fleeing, hiding, or interfering with the investigation, and the court will decide on the 22nd of December whether to approve his arrest.

Ziobro said he acted legally and that the charges are politically motivated.

On Monday, the 17th, President Karol Nawrocki revealed a plan to add 3.5 billion złoty, around 900 million dollars, into the National Health Fund and launch new projects, including a sub-fund for rare child diseases.

The Medical Fund, a fund for specific healthcare projects such as rare diseases and innovative treatments, has paid 800 million złoty, about 200 million dollars, for medical tests this year, but it didn’t use some money set aside for oncology projects. The president wants to redirect those funds to treat kids and young patients.

The plan also adds a hospital safety fund for emergencies, like wars or fuel-induced disasters, and a Patient Service Center to make it easier for people to book appointments, get preventive care information, and give feedback.

More news on health, as on Tuesday, the 18th, Roberta Metsola, the President of the European Parliament, kicked off The Power of Existence, an exhibition about organ transplants in Brussels.

Adam Jarubas, a Polish MEP, and the Silesian Center for Heart Diseases in Zabrze, southern Poland, organized the project, which displays student-made posters on organ transplants and celebrates forty years since Poland’s first successful heart transplant.

Metsola called Professor Zbigniew Religa, a pioneering Polish cardiac surgeon, a hero for his nineteen eighty-five heart transplant, saying it was a huge milestone for Polish and European healthcare, done under tough communist-era conditions. He added that organ transplants now save over 30,000 European lives each year.

On Friday, the 14th, the country launched Innovate Poland, a new program to boost local startups. The Polish Development Fund, National Development Bank, Universal Insurance Company, and the European Investment Fund put in four billion złoty, about one billion dollars, to support startups.

Andrzej Domański, the Finance Minister, said the biggest problem for Polish entrepreneurs is getting funding.

Innovate Poland will help Polish companies grow abroad and boost Poland’s technological skills.

Still in new initiatives, on Wednesday, the 19th, the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, had the first reading of a bill regarding the Marshal’s Guard. The bill would give the Guard new defense duties and a housing allowance for officers.

It aims to make the Guard stronger, update their procedures, and give officers fairer benefits.

Other proposals include an honorary badge for top officers, removing civil defense duties, and simpler candidate checks.

On another note, on Wednesday, the 19th, Jakub Chlebowski, a lawyer specializing in new technology law, published an essay on the independent news site Klub Jagielloński about the government’s plans for online rules and the debate about censorship.

The government wants social media platforms to take down threats, hate speech, and harassment, and if they don’t, regulators step in.

He said the rules won’t really stop everyday harassment because they mostly go after illegal online activity and will need court approval.

Chlebowski thinks courts should handle online disputes directly so platforms will take complaints seriously while keeping free speech safe.

He added that when politicians talk about censorship to scare people, social media platforms hold back from removing harmful content so people won’t blame them for limiting free speech.

In unrelated news, on Sunday, the 16th, Polish authorities blocked a German auction that planned to sell artefacts linked to Nazi concentration camp victims and Soviet atrocities.

The auction in Neuss, western Germany, showcased letters, documents, posters, and personal items from concentration camps, including Auschwitz in southern Poland, Majdanek in the east, Buchenwald in central Germany, and Katyn in western Russia.

The Polish Culture Ministry said it will reclaim the items because occupiers took them from Poland during or after World War II, and they are a part of camp equipment and documentation that belongs to the Polish state. The auction house pulled the items from its website after Poland intervened.

Officials said the situation shocked them and called for international cooperation to protect these historical objects and the stories behind them.

To wrap up this edition, on Friday the 14th, the Institute of Market and Social Research published the results of a survey that it conducted between the 27th of September and the 6th of October for Santander Bank on Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping habits among 1,000 adult Polish shoppers.

They found that forty-five percent of Poles worry that shops might manipulate prices, while only twenty-six percent actually plan to shop. The most active shoppers are in their thirties, and women are more likely than men to buy pricier items during these sales.

In the past, many Poles used Black Friday to buy holiday gifts or things they normally couldn’t afford, but now they’re cautious and suspect that shops manipulate prices or offer fake discounts.

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

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