Poland Acts Urgently After Receiving Intelligence of Plot to Assassinate PM Tusk and Defense Minister: “High Likelihood It Will Be Carried Out”

[The Financial News] Polish authorities have launched an urgent response after receiving intelligence about a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz.
According to foreign media, including AFP, on the 11th (local time), Polish Interior Ministry spokesperson Karolina Gałecka said that a report of a possible assassination attempt against the two senior officials had been received through the State Protection Service (SOP) and forwarded to the police.
In response, an emergency special countermeasures meeting was held at the Counterterrorism Center of the Internal Security Agency (ABW), attended by officials from security agencies including the police, SOP and Interior Ministry. Jacek Dobrzyński, spokesman for the minister-coordinator of the special services, said after the meeting, “We are treating this matter with the utmost seriousness,” adding, “We assessed that there is a very high likelihood that the assassination plot will actually be carried out.” Government spokesperson Adam Szłapka also added, “Senior officials are sometimes threatened, but this case is unusually concerning.”
The intelligence about the assassination plot has heightened tensions further, coming as security measures have been significantly stepped up following a recent spate of knife attacks in Poland. In Poland, three knife attacks took place over four days at vocational and elementary schools, among other locations, in the Masovian Voivodeship and elsewhere, leaving one school staff member in their 30s dead and numerous students and teachers injured. At a government meeting that day, Tusk condemned the successive school knife attacks as “spontaneous and nihilistic violence inspired by the online ‘glorification of violence,’” rather than the work of a particular political ideology or a large organization.
Authorities have not disclosed specific details of the assassination plot or who was behind it, and have not officially linked it directly to the Russia-Ukraine war. However, incidents suspected of being Russian “hybrid attacks”—including cyberattacks on water and energy infrastructure and hospitals, as well as damage to railway tracks—have continued to occur in Poland, apparently aimed at obstructing support for Ukraine. As a result, concerns over national security have reached their highest level.
[email protected] Park Ji-hyun Reporter