Tag: poland

Kraków Gunman Appears to Have Been an LGBT Leftist, According to His Social Media

Poland’s left-leaning Tusk government and international media labeled Kraków gunman Michał Oksiński far-right, but prosecutors found no evidence of a right-wing affiliation, while images circulating on X from deleted Facebook accounts attributed to him appear to show him posing with an LGBT Pride flag and mocking the pope.

On Nov. 7, Michał Oksiński, 24, drove a Subaru onto Kraków’s Main Market Square and opened fire at random, killing six people and wounding 15. Police officers Jakub Kulik and Artur Morański chased him from the square, and both were shot in the exchange of fire. Kulik, hit three times, approached the gunman, fired, and stopped him, then applied a tourniquet to his own arm. The dead included an Austrian woman and a British man. It was Poland’s deadliest shooting since the fall of communism in 1989.

Before driving to Kraków, Oksiński shot his father Janusz, 53, his mother Renata, 52, and his sister Magdalena, 21, a painting student at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts, in the family flat in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski, according to investigators. Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek said Oksiński faced a separate murder charge over those killings, bringing the total number killed to nine. Investigators found two AR-15 rifles, two pistols and several hundred rounds of ammunition in his car and on his person. In all, they seized 11 firearms. Oksiński died in hospital on Nov. 9 after three operations.

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Horror in Poland: Three Bodies Found in Suspected Kraków Mass Shooter’s Home

The alleged gunman suspected of killing at least six people and injuring over a dozen more in Kraków, Poland, on Saturday has been identified by authorities as a 24-year-old Polish man.

UPDATE 2225: Poland Police said on Saturday evening that a search of the suspected shooter’s residence in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski uncovered the bodies of three people, including two women and a man.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said of the found bodies: “This is truly an exceptional tragedy. There are many indications that these are members of the immediate family.”

Internal Affairs Minister Marcin Kierwiński said the suspect appeared to be interested in far-right ideology; however, he said this still needs to be investigated.

The original story continues as follows…

According to the local Gazeta Krakowska newspaper, the suspected attacker drove a Subaru car with a licence plate from Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski, a city two hours north of Kraków, before opening fire on pedestrians on Sławkowska Street and later Market Square in central Krakow on Saturday.

The man, who has been identified as a 24-year-old Polish man, was dressed in military-style garb during the attack and is said to have used an AR-15 rifle, shooting and killing six people and injuring at least 15 more. The suspected attacker was shot by the police and taken to hospital where he underwent surgery.

“He fired shots at the police, and the police returned fire. We don’t know his identity. He was dressed in military clothing and was using a military-style weapon. There were a lot of weapons and ammunition in his car. A dozen or so people were injured; they were accidental victims,” ​​a Provincial Police spokesman said.

Police further said that they believe there was only one shooter, however, it remains to be seen if the suspect had any accomplices in planning or carrying out the attack. Police have also yet to establish a motive for the attack, or if the attacker was mentally disturbed.

Minister of Defense Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz denied rumours that the suspect was a member of the armed forces, writing on X: “The man was not and is not a soldier of the Polish Army and has never had anything to do with the military.”

Polish news outlet Onet identified the alleged shooter as “Michał O.” from Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski. According to the report, he had a permit for two firearms and his father is licensed to own a firearm and owns 11 weapons. The outlet reported that neither the son or father had a criminal record.

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Tusk Cries ‘Russian Interference’ As Opposition Pushes No-Confidence Vote For Court Takeover

Recent days have seen Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk thrust into the international spotlight after what’s been widely dubbed a forced takeover of what’s supposed to be an independent top court, the Constitutional Tribunal.

Another key official, Poland’s Supreme Court First President Zbigniew Kapiński, has joined the growing chorus of those condemning Tusk’s actions as tantamount to orchestrating a coup d’état.

“These actions bear the hallmarks of a coup d’état,“ Kapiński declared Monday, in reference to the chaotic events kicked into motion Friday night.

According to more of Kapiński’s remarks as quoted in The Hungarian Conservative:

Kapiński insisted that Bogdan Święczkowski remained the legitimate president of the Tribunal and warned that the government could attempt a similar takeover of the Supreme Court itself. Appointed to his current position by President Karol Nawrocki in May, he argued that nothing comparable had happened since the introduction of martial law in communist Poland.

The Supreme Court chief has also convened an extraordinary General Assembly of judges for Tuesday, 3 November, to discuss threats to Poland’s constitutional order and adopt an official position on the crisis.

When The Economist notes that democracy is being blown up…

Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal is supposed to embody democratic stability, but has spent the past decade as a battleground for fights between populists and liberals. The latest conflict looks like a full-blown constitutional crisis.

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Korybko: Germany’s Attempted Takeover Of Poland By Proxy Is To Prepare Europe For War With Russia

Just like Nazi Germany seized Czechoslovakia’s gold and its robust military-industrial complex in the run-up to World War II, so too is today’s Germany plotting to seize Poland’s gold and subordinate European NATO’s largest army to Berlin ahead of a possibly upcoming war with Russia by 2030.

Polish conservative firebrand Dominik Tarczyński recently explained liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s attempted judicial coup as being driven by him then wanting to seize control of the Central Bank, introduce the euro, and then finally transfer Poland’s gold to the European Central Bank (ECB) in Germany. As it turns out, Poland has the world’s 10th-largest gold reserves, and its 550 tonnes as of 2026 are more than the ECB’s 506.5. The ECB would therefore more than double its reserves in that scenario.

That’s a significant motivation for what was assessed here to be Germany’s attempted takeover of Poland by proxy through Tusk’s armed seizure of the Constitutional Tribunal with all that could follow. It could also at least temporarily rejuvenate the euro amidst the rapid militarization that most of its members, the vast majority of whom use the euro, are engaging in to prepare for war with Russia by 2030. The bloc’s de facto German leader is far ahead of everyone with a planned €800 billion program.

Poland commands European NATO’s (E-NATO) largest military, and conservative President Karol Nawrocki is opposed to the EU’s “Security Action For Europe” (SAFE) loans that would also obligate that most of the equipment be purchased from the bloc’s members, not Poland’s American and Korean partners. He accordingly proposed the “Polish SAFE 0%” program for 185 billion zloty (~$46 billion), the equivalent of the loan that the EU is extending, which Tusk’s government agreed to despite Nawrocki’s disapproval.

If the ongoing attempted German takeover of Poland by proxy succeeds, and Poland joins the euro prior to more than doubling the ECB’s reserves by transferring all of its gold there, then Germany could much more easily advance its plot of federalizing the EU with itself as the most dominant force therein. Coupled with the rapid militarization of the EU as a whole, with the largest army in E-NATO then subordinated to Germany, the 1941-like threat that Dmitry Medvedev warned about would materialize.

The seizure of the Poland’s gold reserves is central to this scenario, ergo why Tusk is expected to support that through the introduction of the euro if his judicial coup succeeds, and there’s an historical precedent for his suspected German patron to pursue this policy that’s actually against Russia. Hitler seized Czechoslovakia’s gold reserves and its robust military-industrial complex in the immediate run-up to World War II, both of which were considered by historians to be indispensable to his war effort.

Likewise, in the run-up to the EU’s possible clash with Russia by 2030, today’s Germany is attempting to seize Poland’s gold reserves and subordinate the largest army in E-NATO to Berlin in dual moves that would be indispensable in the aforesaid scenario. Unlike back then when Germany led the invasion of the USSR from the front, it might instead task its Polish subordinate with sending Poles to die in Ukraine for perpetuating the NATO-Russian proxy war there or starting another one after the latest conflict ends.

Considering what’s at stake, namely the materialization of another 1941-like threat to Russia brought about by the German-dominated European Federation that could follow Berlin’s attempted takeover of Poland by proxy through Tusk’s judicial coup, Poland’s political crisis is of global significance. Its outcome could mean the difference between war and peace, without any exaggeration, since it’ll shape the post-war European order for years to come.

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Poland’s Would-Be Globalist Coup

While Poland’s conservative president, Karol Nawrocki, was flying to Senegal, police dispatched by Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s justice minister took control of the grounds of the country’s highest constitutional court. Tusk, a pro-EU liberal and former president of the European Council, governs with a coalition that includes Poland’s left-wing parties.

Police locked out the court’s chief judge, Bogdan Święczkowski, while a judge allied with Tusk declared herself in charge. Nawrocki turned his plane around, returned to Warsaw, and denounced the operation as a forcible takeover of a constitutional body. Poland’s conservatives are calling it a coup, accusing the ruling coalition of using the justice ministry and police to seize control of the court that can strike down its laws.

Shortly after 6 p.m. on Friday, orders signed by Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska appeared on the court’s website. They suspended the chief judge and his deputy for one month and named Korwin-Piotrowska acting head of the court, on the grounds that she has the longest judicial career of any sitting judge.

Korwin-Piotrowska heads Themis, a judges’ association that challenged the previous conservative government over her removal from office. That government’s justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, removed her as vice president of the regional court in Opole in 2017. Tusk’s justice ministry appointed her president of the same court in October 2024, and his parliamentary majority elected her to the constitutional court in March 2026.

Polish law requires incoming constitutional court judges to take their oath before the president, but she took hers at a ceremony in parliament. Nawrocki has never accepted that oath, and neither he nor the court’s leadership recognizes her as a judge.

Police said they acted on letters from Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek and Korwin-Piotrowska. Żurek, who also serves as Poland’s chief prosecutor, is a former judge and was a prominent critic of the previous conservative government’s judicial reforms. After taking office in 2025, he removed 46 court presidents and vice presidents.

In January, Poland’s Supreme Court ruled that he had acted unlawfully in dismissing three judicial officials. Korwin-Piotrowska’s letter warned of possible threats to the lives and health of judges and staff. Officers in riot gear secured the grounds inside the court’s fence and prevented the chief judge from entering. Police said they did not enter the building.

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Poland Says It Out Loud: The Goal Is To Defeat Russia, And Europe Is Headed For A Wider War

The Foreign Minister of Poland, a country which borders on Russia and Belarus, said in an interview to CNN that Russia must not be allowed to come out on top, and Europe is preparing for a long war.

Foreign Minister of Poland Radoslaw Sikorski explained to CNN the point of view of Polish government regarding the war in Ukraine. Sikorski believes that the US has adopted a strategy of ending the war on whatever terms are necessary so that it can return to economic cooperation. “But you can end any war by surrendering,” Sikorski noted. “So the terms matter.”

He then accused US negotiators of another mistake: treating the conflict in Ukraine as a war about territory. In his telling, American negotiators think that if Ukraine surrendered the last two cities it holds in Donbas, Putin could save face and the war would come to an end. “There might be some kind of pause,” he continued. “But the Soviet Union minus Ukraine is Russia without great-power status. To be a global superpower, Russia needs Ukraine.”

He went on to recount a few historical battles and wars where Russia was defeated. He called it a myth, successfully planted in the West, that Russia always wins. “They lost the Crimean War. They lost the war against Japan. They emerged from World War I with their tails between their legs,” he said. “They lost their invasion of Poland. They lost Afghanistan. And they lost the Cold War.”

Read that again. A sitting NATO foreign minister is describing a war aimed at stripping Russia of great-power status, and he is describing it as winnable.

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Poland’s President Says Tusk Invented CIA Report To Scare Poles And Cash In Politically

Polish President Karol Nawrocki in an interview with the daily Rzeczpospolita accused Prime Minister Donald Tusk of inventing a CIA report in order to threaten Poland with a Russian attack and garner political capital.

Polish President Karol Nawrocki in an interview with the daily Rzeczpospolita published on Tuesday accused Prime Minister Donald Tusk of using a CIA report that he himself had invented in order to scare Poles with warnings of a Russian attack and cash in politically. His comments have placed Poland in a very difficult situation with its allies, Nawrocki said. “When I’m meeting partners from around the world, I hear the question directly: do you know something more than we do. That is a very dangerous situation,” he added.

Nawrocki said the main aim of such messages is a so-called “rally-around-the-flag effect,” in which citizens who fear an enemy back whoever is in power. He stressed that he has just as much information as Prime Minister Tusk has, and possibly even more. He also underscored that the level of the threat from Russia has not changed in the last six months. “The only thing that has changed is that one politician persistently uses this threat for his own political gain,” said the head of state.

This dispute over Tusk’s CIA report dates back to the beginning of September. After a meeting of the leaders of the Visegrad Group in Bratislava the Prime Minister declared that he had received “a fairly precise report directly from the head of the CIA” on possible events in the next few months. According to the report there could be provocations at border crossings and also attempts at sabotage from within. In response, Marcin Przydacz, head of the president’s international policy office, wrote on X that there was no secret CIA report on any desk. He called it an invented lie meant to get the public worked up, and said none of the news channels that ran it for two days ever checked the facts.

So, this is what is left of the so-called proof. National Security Bureau chief Bartosz Grodecki said that Tomasz Siemoniak, the minister coordinating the special services, was his source for information that he in turn shared with President Nawrocki. Wirtualna Polska concluded that the verbal readout of the conversation with CIA Director John Ratcliffe was all there was, and that no document ever reached the president’s desk. Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Bosacki stressed that there was no lie and no exaggeration on the part of the prime minister. After the interview, Prime Minister Tusk wrote on X that Nawrocki does not see a growing Russian threat, and thanked him for his honesty.

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Polish Police Arrest Man Suspected Of Plotting To Assassinate PM Donald Tusk

Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on X, “The man threatening an attack has been detained. Thank you to the police officers for their swift and decisive action.”

Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński first announced the arrest about ten minutes before Tusk took to X.

Kierwiński said, “The man threatening an attack has been detained. Thank you to the police officers for their swift and decisive action.”

Polish police earlier said they had received information about a possible assassination plot targeting both Tusk and Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz.

Jacek Dobrzyński, the security services spokesman, said, “We take this matter extremely seriously,” adding that authorities believed there was a “high probability” the threats would be carried out.

Tusk warned in September that Russia could intensify hybrid attacks against European countries supporting Ukraine. Moscow has rejected those allegations.

So far, Polish officials have not disclosed whether the man arrested was linked to any state actors.

Poland Holds Emergency Security Meeting Over Suspected Plot To Assassinate PM Tusk 

Elevated security threats across Ukraine, Europe, and the Gulf are increasing global instability and the risk of conflict spilling across borders. A major concern is that simultaneous crises could reinforce one another and lead to a broader confrontation.

The latest development comes from NATO member Poland, which borders Ukraine, where security services are investigating a suspected plot to assassinate Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz.

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Polish Foreign Minister Says Ukraine War Should Keep Going No Matter What

The foreign minister of Poland, Radosław Sikorski, once more expressed the stance of his country in relation to the conflict in Ukraine, stating that it is not a war that needs to be ended.

The negative perception of Russia that can be gleaned from the comments of Sikorski and his country’s institutions, including their foreign policy and mainstream media, is part and parcel of the arguments currently employed by them in order to establish the view of Russia as a failed state. Furthermore, historical grievances which can still be utilized as tools to be employed against Russia in order to bring it to its knees are being consistently emphasized and brought to the forefront of Polish foreign policy.

Poland’s stance in relation to Russia is in lockstep with the remainder of the EU and the structures of NATO, the principal goal of foreign policy being to ensure the continued goals of these two organizations. In other words, as long as these are able to function in a suitable manner in the region from the perspective of their leadership, Poland will continue to support the war.

These comments reveal that Sikorski views Russia through the prism of economic underachievement. He once calculated the position that Russia would occupy had it developed at the same rate as Canada from 1913 onwards and arrived at the conclusion that by then it would have reached the level of the economy of the United States. Alas, we are told that, instead, the economy of Russia has been decreasing and is now even smaller than that of Italy.

The point Sikorski’s comments make is that of Russia’s economic underdevelopment and how it should be used in order to continually put even greater and greater pressure upon it, while, at the same time, also curtailing its existence. Sikorski would continue to advocate further degradation of the economy of Russia in order to force it to negotiate and to insist that any concessions that may be granted to it in terms of geography would in reality amount to nothing more than a reward to aggression on its part.

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Poland, US Discuss Establishing Permanent American Military Bases

Poland and Pentagon officials are in discussions about possibly locating several American military bases in the country, Polish Deputy Defense Minister Paweł Zalewski said after a meeting of the North Atlantic Council at NATO headquarters in Brussels Aug. 27.

Zalewski said he met with Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby about plans for the bases and defense policy.

“The American presence in Poland can encompass various defense capabilities,” Zalewski told Polish Radio after the meeting. “We believe it doesn’t have to be concentrated in one place. Of course, there are several locations we want to discuss with the U.S. side where such a presence would be truly massive. However, we are still talking about several bases and several locations.”

Poland formally requested new permanent U.S. military bases in June after Trump pledged to send 5,000 additional troops to the country. About 10,000 U.S. troops are already stationed in Poland, which spends about $15,000 for each, according to the country’s defense department.

Poland’s priorities are to secure defense capabilities the country currently lacks, such as reconnaissance and command functions, rather than simply increasing troop numbers, Zalewski said.

The bases would be a permanent strategy for the United States and not just a reaction to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, according to Poland.

“A permanent U.S. presence would reflect America’s long-term strategic interest in the country, not merely respond to the recent activities of Russia,” Zalewski said.

The discussion also included nuclear weapons logistics, according to the deputy defense minister.

He added, however, that Poland didn’t want nuclear warheads stationed in the country.

“Poland does not want to have nuclear warheads on this territory,” Zalewski said. “We want to participate in NATO nuclear deterrence but that does not mean to have nuclear warheads on our territory.”

Poland’s Minister of National Defense Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz appeared to clarify the comments in a statement on X later in the day.

“To dispel any doubts: Poland remains steadfastly interested in participating in the NATO Nuclear Sharing program,” Kosiniak-Kamysz said in the post. “We are also conducting talks regarding the proposal for participation in the European nuclear protective umbrella. Our government’s stance on these issues is unequivocal.”

The Pentagon didn’t respond to a request for comment about the bases by publication time.

Colby visited Belgium this week to meet with European allies and press them to increase their defense expenditures as Washington evaluates its policy toward the region.

The Pentagon asked the allies to assess their commitment to U.S. foreign policy goals as part of a European Force review launched in June by War Secretary Pete Hegseth. The review examines the future deployment of about 80,000 U.S. troops across Europe, with nearly half of them expected in Germany.

Colby introduced the new framework, which he dubbed “NATO 3.0,” earlier this year.

Some countries are concerned the review will result in U.S. troop cuts in Europe. President Donald Trump has threatened to withdraw troops from countries that refused to help the United States secure the Strait of Hormuz during the Iran conflict.

In May, the Pentagon ordered the withdrawal of 5,000 troops from Germany after tensions flared between Trump and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz over the Iran war.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said Friday that Europe and Canada had accepted a more equitable share of defense spending since last year.

“Still, there is much more to be done and we’ll get there,” Rutte said.

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