Today’s news round-up in Poland
Start your day with a summary of today’s top stories from Poland’s leading news sites.
TVPInfo.pl - On Friday, the Belarusian Supreme Court will rule in an appeal against the sentencing of Andrzej Poczobut. Poczobut, a journalist and an active member of the Union of Poles in Belarus (ZPB), a Polish minority organisation that had been delegalised by the Belarusian authorities, had been arrested in March 2021 on charges of "instigating hatred against religious and national groups, and rehabilitating Nazism." In February 2023, he was sentenced to eight years in prison. The appeal hearing will be held behind closed doors because, according to the Supreme Court, Poczobut's trial in the Grodno regional court took place in this format. Polish authorities are demanding the dropping of all charges against Poczobut.
TVN24.pl – On Friday, over 2,500 people were evacuated in Wroclaw (southwestern Poland). The reason was that a 250-kilogram World War Two bomb was found at the intersection of Staszic Square and Reymonta Street, near a railroad overpass. Everyone living within a half-kilometer radius of the unexploded bomb had to be evacuated. Sappers plan to neutralize the bomb around 11 a.m.
rp.pl - Several countries are trying to figure out who is responsible for the blowing up, in September 2022, both lines of the Nord Stream pipeline and one line of Nord Stream 2, which transported Russian natural gas to Germany. Such investigations are being carried out in Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Poland. In March 2023, German ARD TV and the weekly Die Zeit wrote that the crew of the "Andromeda" yacht may be responsible for the explosion. In early September 2022, five men and a woman sailed from Rostock, Germany, to a Danish island on the Baltic Sea, close to the site of the explosion. A few days ago, German media reported that investigators were looking into two new leads linking the explosion to Ukraine. According to the Rzeczpospolita daily, the Polish investigation does not confirm neither German information about the Andromeda yacht nor the Ukrainian connection. Instead, Polish investigators indicate that then in the area of the explosion there were a number of Russian vessels adapted to operating underwater.
TokFM.pl - During a closed-door session of two parliamentary commissions (defence and special services), opposition deputies demanded from Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak information on the incident involving a Russian missile. In late April, the Defence Ministry announced that the remains of an unidentified military object had been found 15 kilometres from the Polish north-central city of Bydgoszcz. It was suspected this was a Russian missile that crashed into a forest near the city in December last year. Before Thursday's commission session, Blaszczak tweeted that he would not provide any explanation. "NO to creating happenings in the Sejm (lower house of Polish parliament – PAP)," he wrote. According to Blaszczak, MPs from the biggest opposition party, Civic Platform (PO), announced that they would file a motion for his resignation before hearing explanations.
