SIKORSKI WARNS POLAND ON TRUMP REMARKS. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent statement that the United States is strongly contemplating abandoning NATO is serious.
After NATO refused to join his assault on Iran, Trump told The Telegraph that he was seriously considering leaving the international coalition.
Trump called the alliance a “paper tiger” and claimed leaving the military treaty was “beyond reconsideration.”
Sikorski told TVN24 that such utterances should be taken “as a possibility and taken seriously.”
Sikorski stated that Poland needs two insurance policies, rather than relying on one, referring to European plans to enhance defense capabilities for security.
“Today it turns out that we need to consider alternatives,” he said.
Sikorski said, “of course NATO is the cornerstone of our security; of course we want to be a good, loyal ally of the United States, but we cannot pretend that the U.S. president is not saying what he is saying.”
DEMANDS APOLOGY. Poland summoned Israel’s chargé d’affaires, demanding an apology after Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir shared a video mocking detained activists, including Polish citizens.
As part of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, activists from 56 countries launched 70 vessels to break Israel’s naval barrier and raise awareness of Gaza’s humanitarian crisis. Israeli forces held 420 people on the ships in international seas, including the Polish volunteers.
Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski summoned the envoy to express shock and seek an explanation for “extremely inappropriate behavior” by Israeli cabinet member Ben Gvir, who posted video of the activists kneeling with hands tied behind their backs and heads bent, captioned “This is how we welcome terrorism supporters. Welcome to Israel. We are the masters.”
“Polish citizens who have committed no crime must not be treated this way. In the democratic world, we do not abuse or mock people held in detention,” Sikorski tweeted.
This video was widely criticized throughout Europe.
EC ADDRESSES POLLUTION. Poland’s failure to restore and protect the Oder River after previous environmental disasters led the European Commission to initiate infringement proceedings.
Poor river water quality created algal blooms that killed 360 tons of fish in 2022 and 100 tons in 2024. Since, Poland has failed to preserve the Oder by reducing mine saline water output, according to the EC.
Polish officials have two months to react to the EC’s formal letter of notice. If it fails to reassure Brussels, the commission may sue Poland at the EU Court of Justice.
Since the 2022 and 2024 toxic golden algae outbreaks, “the measures taken by Poland have been insufficient to reverse the deterioration and ensure that water bodies achieve good status,” the commission found.
ANOTHER MASS GRAVE DISCOVERED. The Polish state Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) has found a mass grave in Ukraine where Ukrainian nationalists massacred ethnic Poles in the Volhynia massacres during World War II.
After a diplomatic breakthrough that lifted a protracted restriction on exhumation operations, Ukraine permitted the search for victims to restart.
The IPN found the remains on the first day of search operations in Ostrówki and Wola Ostrowiecka, posting photos. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) killed around 1,000 Poles there on August 30, 1943, as part of an ethnic cleansing operation.
In the 1990s, 2011 and 2015, both sites exhumed hundreds of victims. In 2017, Ukraine banned massacre victim searches after Poland demolished a UPA monument.
According to the Polish Press Agency, researchers believe there may be 30 burial sites in the two communities with 350 fatalities.
The 1943–1945 massacres killed 100,000 ethnic Poles, predominantly women and children, according to the IPN. It estimates unmarked “death pits” include 55,000 Polish and 10,000 Jewish victims.
