Deaths, including those of two children, occured in three separate incidents, two in Zakopane and one in Rabka-Zdrój
Five people have been killed by falling trees as strong winds battered southern Poland on Monday, reaching a speed of 96mph (155km/h) in the highest parts of the Tatra mountains.
In the town of Rabka-Zdrój, two women and a six-year-old died after a tree crushed them, firefighters said.
Continue reading...Polish prime minister urges countries to step up defence spending after Russian missile bound for Ukraine breaches airspace
The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, says Europe is entering a “prewar” era, cautioning that the continent is not ready and urging European countries to step up defence investment.
In an interview with a group of European newspapers reported by the BBC, Tusk said: “I don’t want to scare anyone, but war is no longer a concept from the past. It’s real and it started over two years ago.”
Continue reading...Russian missile was targeting Ukraine’s Lviv region while Kyiv suffers third pre-dawn attack in four days
Poland said it would demand an explanation from Moscow after a Russian missile briefly breached Polish airspace during a massive missile attack on Ukraine, prompting the Nato member to put its forces on heightened readiness.
Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with Sunday’s early morning strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut.
Continue reading...Survey shows supporters of nationalist parties hold widely differing views on EU membership, migration and support for Ukraine
Populist and nationalist parties fighting the European elections in June are deeply divided on almost all key issues, according to a survey, in a finding that questions their chances of defining the bloc’s agenda even in the event of a predicted far-right surge.
However, the report, by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), also said pro-EU parties risked mobilising the Eurosceptic vote if they continued to ape hard-right policies rather than coming up with persuasive alternatives.
Continue reading...European military powers try to dampen tensions between them over Russian war and US aid for Kyiv
The three leading military powers in mainland Europe – France, Germany and Poland – are holding an emergency session in Berlin to try to dampen tensions over their different responses to the twin spectres of Russian military advances in Ukraine and US Congress’s refusal to approve substantial further military aid for Kyiv.
The clash in approach – predominantly between the newly hawkish French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the perennially cautious German chancellor, Olaf Scholz – was laid bare in a dramatic French TV interview on Thursday night in which Macron said Europe’s security, even its existence, was at risk.
Continue reading...RAF jet was taking defence secretary back to UK from Poland, and flying near Russian exclave of Kaliningrad
Russia is believed to have jammed the satellite signal on an RAF aircraft carrying Grant Shapps back from Poland, according to government sources.
Defence sources said there was no danger to Shapps, who was travelling back to the UK, though they called it a “wildly irresponsible” act of electronic warfare.
Continue reading...Speaker says parliament will not consider updating country’s draconian abortion policies until mid-April
Women’s groups and opposition politicians have taken aim at Poland’s parliamentary speaker, accusing him of betrayal and seeking to “freeze” the issue of abortion, after he said parliament would not consider legislation to tackle the country’s near-total ban on abortion until mid-April.
“We feel disappointed and betrayed,” said Dominika Ćwiek from Legal Abortion, one of the groups that has been at the forefront of the battle against the country’s draconian abortion policies. “The rights of Polish women are being treated as a side issue.”
Continue reading...Coalition government to slim down school curriculum after cramming of subjects under previous nationalist administration
Poland’s new government is seeking to slim down the material taught in schools by about 20%, saying a cramming of the curriculum under the previous rightwing populist administration has left teachers and students exhausted.
Speaking during a school visit in the Silesian town of Mysłowice over the weekend, the education minister, Barbara Nowacka, said she was consulting experts on how to narrow down the curriculum, which will come into force in secondary schools after the summer break, from 1 September.
Continue reading...Tino Chrupalla says it is ‘unbearable’ the extent to which Putin has been blamed, with similar comments from Italian deputy PM Matteo Salvini
The Republican senator Lindsey Graham, a key ally of Donald Trump, has been added to a list of “terrorists and extremists” kept by Russia’s state financial monitoring agency.
Tass, the state-run news agency, first reported the move by Rosfinmonitoring, which allows authorities to freeze Russian bank accounts, though in Graham’s case is likely to be chiefly symbolic.
Continue reading...Volodymyr Zelenskiy accuses Warsaw of ‘mockery’ as farmers blockade Ukrainian grain at border
Poland’s bitter dispute with Ukraine over farm imports has escalated as Polish farmers dumped grain from a freight train as part of nationwide protests and Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Warsaw of “mockery”.
In a video address on Monday, Ukraine’s president described the blockade by Polish farmers as absurd at a time when Russia was bombing his country. “The situation is not about grain, but rather about politics,” he said, after a visit to the frontline town of Kupiansk.
Continue reading...Activist Bart Staszewski hails ‘meaningful and necessary’ apology as opening new chapter for state broadcaster
A television presenter with Poland’s state broadcaster has apologised for the years of “shameful words” directed at LGBTQ+ people, in a moment hailed by a prominent rights campaigner as the closing of a chapter in Polish society.
Bart Staszewski, an activist and film-maker, said the apology made to him live on air on Sunday showed the transformation of a broadcaster that served as a mouthpiece for the Law and Justice (PiS) party during its time in power.
Continue reading...Johan Van Overtveldt, chair of the European parliament’s budgets committee, says newly agreed €50bn aid to Kyiv is will leave a shortfall
Farmers today continued demonstrating in different parts of Europe.
Here are the latest photos:
Continue reading...Andrzej Duda sparked row after saying he was unsure if Kyiv could regain control of Russian-occupied Crimea
Poland’s president has declared he has always been unwavering in his support for Ukraine after being criticised for saying he was unsure whether Kyiv would be able to regain control of Crimea.
Warsaw has been one of Kyiv’s staunchest supporters since Russia invaded the country in 2022 and has said Ukraine must regain control over all of its territory in order to deter Moscow from further aggression.
Continue reading...Images taken secretly some 80 years ago are being published for the first time to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day
A remarkable series of photographs of Jewish families being forced to leave their homes in Germany in the middle of the second world war has been published for the first time, following a chance discovery.
The images are a striking new testament to the sudden upheaval and terror of the Holocaust and were taken secretly by an amateur photographer. He is believed to have wanted to pass down the scenes he was witnessing, despite the risk to himself. They show groups of people gathering outside a restaurant near the railway station in the Silesian city of Breslau, now Wrocław in Poland. Jewish men, women and children of all ages were held here for a few days before deportation by train. Almost all are certain to have been killed just a few days later in a documented shooting in Lithuania. Others were killed at a later date in Poland.
Continue reading...A DNA test has helped Shalom Koray find relatives in the US after escaping the Holocaust in a rucksack at the age of two
In 1943, a two-year-old boy found wandering the streets of the Warsaw ghetto at the height of the Jewish uprising was smuggled out in a rucksack, probably by a police officer.
The identity of the child could not be known. There was no one to attest even to a first name. His early life would be spent hidden away in orphanages, still not safe from antisemitic persecution, and without any real understanding of what it was to have a parent.
Continue reading...France, Poland and Austria among nine countries where radical rightwing parties predicted to finish first
Populist “anti-European” parties are heading for big gains in June’s European elections that could shift the parliament’s balance sharply to the right and jeopardise key pillars of the EU’s agenda including climate action, polling suggests.
Polling in all 27 EU member states, combined with modelling of how national parties performed in past European parliament elections, shows radical right parties are on course to finish first in nine countries including Austria, France and Poland.
Continue reading...Arrest at president’s residence of Mariusz Kamiński and Maciej Wąsik, of Law and Justice party, had sparked bitter political row
Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, said he had pardoned two jailed politicians from the opposition populist Law and Justice (PiS) party, which lost its majority in October elections, and called for their immediate release.
The former interior minister Mariusz Kamiński and his ex-deputy, Maciej Wąsik, were imprisoned this month after being detained in the presidential palace. Their arrests sparked large protests by PiS supporters and both began hunger strikes claiming to be “political prisoners”.
An earlier headline said the two pardoned men were former politicians. They are, in fact, current politicians and the headline has been corrected.
Continue reading...Andrzej Duda’s remarks escalate battle for rule of law with new government and come as politicians convicted of abuse of power begin hunger strike
Poland’s president has said he will not rest until two politicians from the opposition nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party – both on hunger strike – are freed from prison, in a further dramatic escalation in the new government’s battle to restore the rule of law.
“I will not rest in the fight for a fair and just Polish state,” the president, Andrzej Duda, who is closely aligned with PiS, declared on Wednesday. “I won’t be scared. I will act legally, in accordance with the constitution and the law – as before.”
Continue reading...Two men had taken refuge in Andrzej Duda’s presidential palace after dispute
Polish police have arrested two politicians convicted of abuse of power who had taken refuge for hours in the palace of President Andrzej Duda, in a dramatic escalation of a standoff between the new and previous governments.
Duda had welcomed the members of the former ruling party into the presidential palace as police went to their homes to arrest them. Polish media reported the men were arrested inside the palace. Warsaw police gave no details, saying only that the arrest was “in accordance with the court order.”
Continue reading...Culture minister announces withdrawal of art project announced in dying weeks of Law and Justice party administration
Poland’s new government has scrapped the submission conceived under the previous nationalist-populist administration for the country’s Venice Biennale pavilion and replaced it with an interactive show by a Ukrainian art collective, provoking complaints of “censorship” from the artist originally tasked with the Polish entry.
The culture minister, Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz, who was appointed by centrist prime minister Donald Tusk on 13 December, announced the withdrawal of the project, Polish Exercises in the Tragedy of the World: Between Germany and Russia, on Friday. The project had been announced in the dying weeks of the Law and Justice party (PiS) government in what was perceived as an ideological parting shot.
Continue reading...