POLAND: Russian Drones Shot Down & more – 11th Sep 2025

Witam from BA! This is the Rorshok Poland Update from the 11th of September twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Poland.

Let’s kick off with national security. On Wednesday, the 10th, Poland’s military shot down three of nineteen drones that flew into its airspace overnight, launched from Belarus during a Russian attack on Ukraine. PM Donald Tusk stayed in touch with Poland’s president, defense minister, and NATO officials, and called an emergency Cabinet meeting. He also asked NATO allies to hold urgent talks under Article Four, which allows members to meet quickly if one of them feels threatened.

Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, the Defense Minister, said the drones could’ve been dangerous, so the military took them down. Territorial defense units went out to search for debris, and authorities told people not to touch anything and to report fragments to the police.

Airports in the capital and Rzeszów, a city in southeastern Poland, were temporarily closed as a precaution. Police, border guards, and firefighters in eastern Poland went on high alert.

More on security, as on Thursday, the 4th, Poland closed its border with Belarus at midnight ahead of the Zapad-twenty twenty-five military drills that will be carried out by Russia and Belarus, set to start on the 12th of September near the Polish border.

PM Tusk said the drills are aggressive and focus on the Suwałki Gap, a narrow strip of land in northeastern Poland that’s strategically important and lies near Russia’s Kaliningrad region.

Poland and NATO will run their own exercises at the same time as the Zapad-twenty twenty-five war games, which could involve 13,000 to 30,000 troops and include drills simulating the use of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles.

Tensions between Poland and Belarus are already high, and Ukraine has warned that the drills are a serious threat to the region and all of Europe.

Also on Thursday, the 4th, PM Tusk went to Paris for a meeting with the thirty countries that officially support Ukraine, including Canada, Japan, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and Norway.

Tusk said Poland will handle logistics and run the main hub for aid, which all the countries in the group will help out with military equipment, humanitarian supplies, and financial support.

He also met with Emmanuel Macron, the French President, one-on-one and joined a call with US President Trump to talk about how to push Russia into negotiations, even though progress has been slow. Tusk said Europe knows what Russia is up to but wants to work with the US to put joint pressure on Russia and its supporters, including China.

In another meeting, on Tuesday, the 9th, Poland’s President, Karol Nawrocki met with his Finnish counterpart, Alexander Stubb, in Finland, to talk about regional security.

They agreed that Ukraine needs a lasting peace but also said Putin might attack other countries, so they’re strengthening defense and working closely with allies. Nawrocki called keeping US troops in Poland good news for Eastern Europe.

They also talked about expanding the Bucharest Nine, a group of nine Eastern European NATO countries protecting the alliance’s eastern border, to include Finland and Sweden.

On the domestic front, on Monday, the 8th, Krzysztof Gawkowski, the Minister of Digital Affairs, launched a new campaign called Turn On Respect. Turn Off Hate to fight cyberbullying. A recent report from the Research and Academic Computer Network (or NASK) showed that seventy-five percent of teens who faced sexual abuse online didn’t tell anyone, highlighting the urgent need for action.

Gawkowski said online abuse is a serious issue for kids and teens, and the government teamed with NASK and the Internal Security Agency to make the internet safer.

The campaign includes training teachers to spot and respond to cyberbullying, interactive online safety lessons for students, guides for parents on monitoring and talking to their kids, and an anonymous platform to report abuse and get help.

More on new programs, as on Thursday, the 4th, Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk, the Labor Minister, said the government had already received almost 300 applications from companies and about 1,500 more are on the way for a pilot program that will shorten working hours, moving toward a four-day work week, without cutting pay, jobs, or productivity. Sign-ups will end in mid-September. The program will run for a year, starting on the 1st of January, twenty twenty-six.

Dziemianowicz-Bąk said companies are joining on their own, not because they have to. She also said time is a valuable resource and the government should stand with workers when they deal with employers on matters like pay, hours, working conditions, and workplace rights.

Her wider plans include ending unpaid internships, giving inspectors the power to turn fake freelance contracts into regular jobs, and supporting deals that give employees more control over their work.

On the following day, on Friday, the 5th, scientists from the University of Science and Technology in Kraków, in southern Poland, along with teams from Japan and India, announced they created a new smart material that changes color under dangerous pressure before it actually breaks. It could help monitor buildings and bridges and prevent structural failures.

The material glows green-yellow under normal conditions but turns red when under pressure. The color change goes back to normal after using a special liquid to reset it.

It also glows under UV light, making it easy to spot.

Next up, on Tuesday, the 9th, the lower house of parliament kicked off debates on new animal protection laws, including a full ban on keeping dogs on chains. Owners would have to keep them in proper enclosures with enough space to move around.

They’re also looking at other changes, like banning fur farms, limiting loud fireworks, making microchipping pets mandatory, and even reducing the number of people allowed in horse-drawn carriages to Morskie Oko, a lake in the Tatra Mountains in southern Poland.

The campaign behind these changes has huge public support: about half a million people have signed on, including well-known figures like Olga Tokarczuk, a Polish Nobel Prize winner in Literature, and famous Polish actor Daniel Olbrychski.

The parliament will probably pass the bill, but will the president sign it?

Since we mentioned the president, on Thursday, the 4th, he visited the Vatican and met with Pope Leo XIV. He gave the Pope a painting of Our Lady of Gietrzwałd showing Mary holding baby Jesus and invited him to visit Poland.

The painting is connected to the Gietrzwałd apparitions of eighteen seventy-seven, when two girls reportedly saw Mary speaking Polish. These are the only officially recognized Marian apparitions in Poland.

Nawrocki’s visit combined official duties with spiritual moments. He walked through the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica with his family and prayed at St. John Paul II’s tomb, showing the strong connection between Poland and the Vatican.

Speaking of the Catholic Church, on Saturday, the 6th, construction started on Europe’s tallest Virgin Mary statue near Toruń, in central Poland, funded by billionaire Roman Karkosik.

The fifty-five-meter concrete statue will be bigger than Poland’s Christ the King and even Brazil’s Christ the Redeemer, and it will be consecrated on the 15th of August, twenty twenty-six, the Catholic Feast of the Assumption.

The project shows how much influence the Catholic Church has in Poland, especially outside major urban centers.

Closing this edition, on Saturday, the 6th, Polish and Ukrainian officials held funeral ceremonies in Puzhnyky, in western Ukraine, for victims of a World War II massacre whose remains were recently dug up. Experts uncovered at least forty-two people, including women and children, during exhumations from April to May.

Polish officials said the burial restores dignity and gives families a proper place to mourn. President Nawrocki expressed hope that it would help Poland and Ukraine reconcile after the painful wartime killings. Officials also honored Ukrainians who helped save persecuted Poles.

Researchers will use genetic testing to confirm the identities of those buried. They expect to find more graves nearby. Similar digs recently uncovered Polish soldiers from the nineteen thirty-nine defense of Lviv, also in western Ukraine.

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

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