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Tag: poland
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How U.S. could react to missiles entering Poland
How U.S. could react to missiles entering Poland – CBS News
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Poland holds emergency security meeting after reports of fatal explosion, as Russian missiles bombard nearby Ukraine | CNN
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CNN
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Poland convened an emergency meeting of national security officials on Tuesday, after Polish media reported projectiles killed two people near the border with Ukraine on Tuesday.
It is unclear where the projectiles came from, but they landed in the NATO member’s territory roughly the same time as Russia launched its biggest wave of missile attacks on Ukrainian cities in more than a month.
Polish media showed an image of a deep impact and upturned farm vehicle at the site, near the town of Przewodow, around four miles west from the Ukrainian border.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has convened the Committee of the Council of Ministers for National Security and Defense Affairs, a government spokesman said.
A Polish official told CNN that nothing was confirmed yet and the investigation into the incident was continuing.
Russia’s Defense Ministry has denied targeting the border, and called the reports by Polish media “a deliberate provocation in order to escalate the situation,” according to a short statement late Tuesday.
“The statements of the Polish media and officials about the alleged fall of ‘Russian’ missiles in the area of the settlement of Przewodow is a deliberate provocation in order to escalate the situation,” it said, adding that “there were no strikes made on targets near the Ukrainian-Polish state border.”
It added that the photos of wreckage published by the Polish media “from the scene in the village of Przewodow have nothing to do with Russian weapons.”
Nevertheless, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky blamed Russia, describing the fatal explosion as a “significant escalation” in Moscow’s invasion.
Little is publicly known about the origin of the projectiles.
A NATO official told CNN that it was still waiting to learn more about what happened and are waiting on details from Warsaw.
NATO allies responded with concern to the reports. Some were were circumspect in their statements, neither speculating or confirming the origin of the projectile.
A senior White House official says they do not have confirmation of any rocket or missile strike in Poland, but that US officials are currently working to try and figure out exactly what has happened.
State Department principal deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel echoed that the US cannot confirm the reports of missiles hitting Polish territory and killing two.
“We have seen these reports out of Poland and are working with the Polish government and our NATO partners to gather more information,” Patel said at a press briefing. “We can’t confirm the reports or any of the details at this time”
A UK Foreign Office spokesperson said they were “investigating these reports and liaising closely with Allies.”
Baltic NATO states were more strident in their statements, stressing readiness to defend NATO territory.
Estonia called the news “most concerning,” according to a Twitter post from the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“Estonia is ready to defend every inch of NATO territory,” it added.
Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda has said he was concerned by the news, and that “Lithuania stands in strong solidarity with Poland.”
“Every inch of NATO territory must be defended!” he added on social media.
Latvian Defense Minister Artis Pabriks afforded blame on Russia, even though there has been no confirmation from Polish authorities that Russian missiles landed on Polish territory.
“Condolences to our Polish brothers in arms. Criminal Russian regime fired missiles which target not only Ukrainian civilians but also landed on NATO territory in Poland. Latvia fully stands with Polish friends and condemns this crime,” Pabriks wrote.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a group of 30 North American and European nations. According to NATO, its purpose “is to guarantee the freedom and security of its members through political and military means.”
The alliance was created in 1949 in response to the start of the Cold War. Its original purpose was to protect the West from the threat posed by the Soviet Union. Since the end of the Cold War, many former Soviet nations have joined NATO, much to the annoyance of Putin.
The best-known aspect of the alliance is Article 5 of the treaty, which, if invoked, means “an attack against one Ally is considered as an attack against all Allies.”
Article 5 has only ever been invoked once, in response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.
However, the alliance can take collective defense measures without invoking Article 5 – and has done this in the light of the Russian attack on Ukraine.
The State Department’s Patel repeatedly said on Tuesday he would not discuss hypotheticals when asked about NATO Articles 4 and 5, but said that intent “is something that would be of importance” in determining a response.
“As I said, we will determine what happened and we will determine appropriate next steps but like I said, this just happened within the past hour and so we are still taking the important time to figure out the exact facts,” he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has long complained that NATO has, over time, expanded its borders by admitting Eastern European countries that were once part of the Soviet Union – meaning Russia now shares a land border with the world’s largest military alliance, thus reducing his geopolitical power in what was once Moscow’s sphere of influence.
As recently as February, he was demanding that NATO scaled back to the borders of 1997, before the Baltic nations of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, the latter two of which border Russia, joined the alliance.
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Russian missiles crossed into Poland, killing two, says U.S. official
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A senior U.S. intelligence official says Russian missiles crossed into NATO member Poland, killing two people.
Polish government spokesman Piotr Mueller did not immediately confirm the information, but said top leaders were holding an emergency meeting due to a “crisis situation.”
Polish media reported that two people died Tuesday afternoon after a projectile struck an area where grain was drying in Przewodów, a Polish village near the border with Ukraine.
This is a developing story.
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EU border agency says illegal migration entries spiking
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WARSAW, Poland — The European Union’s border agency said Monday that the number of illegal entries by migrants spiked to more than 275,000 in the January through October period this year.
The figure is 73% higher than at the same time in 2021, and the highest since a peak in 2016, Frontex said.
The Warsaw-based European Border and Coast Guard Agency said that most entries continue to happen on the Western Balkan route, where over 128,000 of them were detected. The migrants on that route are mainly from Burundi, Afghanistan and Iraq.
The central Mediterranean route, with migrants chiefly trying to reach Italy, has also seen a 48% rise in unauthorized arrivals, surpassing 79,000 in the first 10 months of 2022, a Frontex statement said.
However, the activity has slowed down on the Western Mediterranean route and on the land route from Ukraine and Belarus. EU members Poland, Lithuania and Latvia have built walls on their borders with Belarus to stop the migrants from trying to illegally enter.
Frontex said that the high number of crossings on the West Balkans area “can be attributed to repeated attempts to cross the border by migrants already present” in the area, but also to people “abusing visa-free access to the region.”
It said some migrants fly visa-free to Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, which isn’t in the EU, and then head toward the external border of the 27-member bloc.
In response, Frontex has added more than 500 corps officers and staff to the region.
In total, more than 2,300 corps officers and Frontex staff are “taking part in various operational activities at the EU external border,” the agency said.
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Follow AP’s coverage of migration issues at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
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Auschwitz hero’s son seeks millions for dad’s 1948 execution
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WARSAW, Poland — The son of World War II Auschwitz death camp hero Witold Pilecki is seeking millions in compensation from the Polish government for his father’s post-war arrest and 1948 execution by the country’s communist authorities of the time.
The case opened Thursday before a Warsaw court and the next session is scheduled for January. Andrzej Pilecki, aged 90, argues that 26 million zlotys ($5.7 million) compensation would be due to his father by Poland’s law that redresses communist-era wrongs.
His father, Cavalry Capt. Witold Pilecki, a Polish resistance member, volunteered in 1940 to be caught by the Nazi Germans and held at Auschwitz in order to organize resistance there and gather evidence of German atrocities. He escaped in 1943 and wrote a report that was the first direct account from Auschwitz made available to the Allies.
After the war he was arrested, tortured and executed by the Moscow-appointed authorities on charges of spying for Poland’s government-in-exile in London. His remains have not been found.
In 1990, Poland’s democratic government paid Pilecki’s widow and two children compensation for the material support that they lost due to his execution.
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Polish leader blames low birthrate on women using alcohol
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WARSAW, Poland — A women’s rights group in Poland on Monday urged people to demonstrate after the country’s ruling party leader claimed that Poland’s low birthrate is partly caused by young women drinking too much alcohol.
Opposition politicians, activists and celebrities accused Jaroslaw Kaczynski, a 73-year-old bachelor, of being out of touch. They also argue that Kaczynski, the most powerful politician in Poland since 2015, is himself partly responsible for the the low birthrate in the central European nation of 38 million people.
In particular, critics point to increased restrictions on abortion that have discouraged some women from seeking to get pregnant. Others note the difficulty that young people have in raising families amid inflation that is reaching nearly 18%.
A women’s rights group voiced fury at Kaczynski’s comment and urged people to protest in front of Kaczynski’s Warsaw home on Nov. 28, the 104th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote in Poland.
“The cretinous words of an old geezer about Polish women that women do not give birth to children because they drink (and not because Poland is hell), this is only a fragment of our reality,” the Women’s Strike wrote Monday on Facebook.
The group said there were many reasons for country’s low birthrate, including Poland’s de facto prohibition of abortion, a lack of access to sexual education and in vitro procedures, inflation, a housing shortage and a lack of access to day care centers.
Kaczynski, leader of the populist ruling party, Law and Justice, spoke Saturday about the demographic challenges of “far too few children” being born as he rallied support for his party ahead of next year’s parliamentary election.
“And here it is sometimes necessary to say a little openly, some bitter things. If, for example, the situation remains such that, until the age of 25, girls, young women, drink the same amount as their peers, there will be no children,” Kaczynski said.
He claimed, without any medical proof, that to develop alcoholism, the average man “has to drink excessively for 20 years” but “a woman only two.”
“I am really a sincere supporter of women’s equality, but I am not a supporter of women pretending to be men, and men pretending to be women,” Kaczynski said.
The remark also triggered predictable jokes along the lines of alcohol being helpful to conception.
The traditionally Roman Catholic country already had one of Europe’s most restrictive abortion laws, with abortions allowed in very few cases, before 2020. Then, a new ruling said that women may no long terminate pregnancies in cases where the fetus has serious abnormalities and is not viable after birth.
That sparked the largest protests in Poland in decades, which were led by Women’s Strike. There have since been cases of pregnant women dying even though a risk to the woman’s life remains a legal grounds for abortion under the current law. Women’s rights advocates say such cases occur because doctors are afraid to terminate pregnancies even when the woman’s life might be at risk, fearing legal consequences.
The number of births per woman in Poland has plummeted from 3 children per woman in 1960 to 1.2 in 2003, according to the World Bank.
It began rising again somewhat after 2003, and got a boost after Kaczynski’s government introduced a monthly cash benefit of 500 zlotys ($108) per child after winning power in 2015, hoping to encourage larger families.
But the birthrate is again declining and Kaczynski admitted last month the program isn’t working as intended. The birthrate stood at 1.32 children per woman in 2021, according to Polish state statistics.
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Coal-Addicted Poland Is Going Nuclear With U.S. Help. It’ll Be A Test For Both Nations.
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WARSAW, Poland — To its east, the Russian military occupying Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant threatens the worst radiation accident since Fukushima. To its west, Germany remains so staunchly opposed to atomic energy, it is planning to shutter its last reactors in the midst of a global energy crisis.
Yet Poland, the coal-addicted nation whose 2018 hosting of the annual United Nations climate conference yielded no major breakthroughs, is coming to this year’s summit with a big and potentially controversial plan. The country is going all in on nuclear energy ― and betting on the United States to revive its own atomic power industry and lead a renaissance of reactor construction.
Over the past year, at least three major U.S. startups signed tentative deals to sell Poland shrunken-down fission reactors like those in naval warships, which they say can be manufactured and constructed faster and more cheaply than traditional large reactors.
Last week brought the biggest announcement: Warsaw chose U.S. nuclear giant Westinghouse Electric Co. to build Poland’s first nuclear power station out of a trio of large-scale reactors placed on the Baltic Sea coast.
Days later, Poland selected the runner-up, South Korea’s state-owned Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, to simultaneously build the country’s second large-scale nuclear plant with a state-controlled utility and a private company. If all goes according to plan, the first plant would come online in 2033, while the second facility would finish its final reactor in 2043.
It’s an engineering feat few modern democracies have managed to actually pull off, requiring decades of steady financing, planning and political support in an age of mounting chaos and cascading crises.
If completed, the two projects would chart a path for the European Union’s sixth largest economy ― and fourth biggest source of planet-heating emissions ― to shutter the coal-fired power plants that generate upward of 70% of Poland’s electricity. It would also herald a turnaround for the declining American nuclear industry and make the U.S. a serious rival again to Russia, whose robust nuclear supply chain makes it the go-to partner for most countries looking to build their first atomic power plant.
That requires reactors actually funneling electrons onto the power grid. And experts warn that the high-stakes race to build Poland’s first nuclear reactor may include enough hurdles to keep any projects from crossing the finish line anytime soon.
Size Matters
The deals highlight a growing debate over the size and design of 21st-century reactors. The U.S., United Kingdom and France are each building one new nuclear power plant with state-of-the-art, large-scale reactors, and all three are years delayed and wildly over budget. It took famously technophilic Finland 17 years to finish its own new reactor, and there are already problems postponing its coming online.
Construction crews at work on a new nuclear reactor at Plant Vogtle power plant in Waynesboro, Georgia, back in 2014. The reactor is scheduled to start producing power next year. By contrast, companies selling “small modular reactors” say forging the machines in factories and manufacturing so-called SMRs at scale will make building new nuclear plants safer, cheaper and faster. Few of the roughly dozen or so companies competing to build the first SMR are anywhere close to receiving licenses and permits, and many have yet to even begin the years-long process. Market forecasts generally expect the technology to become commercially available in the early 2030s.
“We are late with nuclear technology,” Michal Kobosko, vice president of Polska 2050, a fast-growing opposition party in Poland, told HuffPost in an interview in Warsaw last month. “Therefore, coming late, we might easily jump into the next generation technology and small reactors, which are really coming to the market and might be a real alternative to the big nuclear power plants.”
Adam Błażowski, an engineer and nuclear advocate in the western Polish city of Wrocław, has a joke about that.
“We have a saying that SMRs are known for always being seven years in the future,” said Błażowski, the co-founder of Foto4Climate, a pro-nuclear environmental foundation.
On the other hand, he said, there are Westinghouse AP-1000s producing electricity right now.
Considered the world’s safest nuclear reactor, the AP-1000 was supposed to spearhead an American nuclear comeback after Westinghouse released the model in 2006.
The debut AP-1000 project in Georgia was planned as the first of many. But as the total cost doubled to more than $30 billion, the tides turned against nuclear energy in the 2010s when U.S. frackers flooded the market with natural gas, and the Fukushima disaster scared investors away from atomic power. Turning instead to renewables and gas, the U.S. canceled all future plans for new nuclear plants. Unable to keep up with the costs of the Georgia construction and the cancellation of a project in South Carolina, Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy in March 2017. Months later, the engineering company Bechtel took over construction at the Georgia site.
Westinghouse exited Chapter 11 the next year, selling itself to the Canadian asset manager Brookfield Business Partners. In September 2018, one month after the bankruptcy ended, China ― which had been building several of the Westinghouse reactors in its own country ― fired up the first AP-1000 to produce commercial electricity. Ukraine, Poland and Turkey all expressed interest in buying their own AP-1000s.
Betting this could be the start of a comeback for the nuclear energy firm, Brookfield Renewable Partners formed a joint venture with the Canadian uranium producer Cameco to buy Westinghouse in a nearly $8 billion deal.
Students look at a model of a nuclear power plant jointly designed by Hitachi and General Electric on display at an international nuclear power exhibition being held in Hanoi, Vietnam, in October 2012. HOANG DINH NAM via Getty Images
Next year, utility Georgia Power is expected to start up the first of its two new AP-1000s at Plant Vogtle. It will have more than symbolic value.
“It will take the biggest open wound in American nuclear and turn it into a timely and crucial success,” said Mark Nelson, a nuclear engineer and managing director at the consultancy Radiant Energy Group. “Why timely? Because we now have an energy crisis, and the coal and gas saved in Georgia is coal and gas that can help out our European allies.”
The U.S. vs. South Korea vs. France
In Poland, Westinghouse went up against Korea’s KHNP and France’s state-owned EDF. It should have been a tight contest.
The French completed western Europe’s first new nuclear reactor in 25 years in Finland this year, and EDF is building two more at home and in England. The company offered to build Poland four to six of its EPR reactors for between $33 billion to $48.5 billion, according to the financial news site money.pl, which reported the dollar estimates of each bid.
While the single-reactor Finnish project suffered long delays, the Koreans built four AP-1400 reactors in the United Arab Emirates more or less on time and on schedule. KHNP’s bid for six APR-1400s came in at just under $30 billion.
But Westinghouse’s $31 billion proposal for six AP-1000s benefited from geopolitics, Błażowski said. A former Soviet satellite that suffered from centuries of Russian bullying, Poland views the U.S. as its most valuable ally, and its ties to Washington have become even stronger since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The site the Polish government picked out for its flagship nuclear plant was assessed to the AP-1000’s parameters.
Any hope of the U.S. and South Korea collaborating on the project seemed to be dashed when Westinghouse last week sued KHNP, claiming the Korean APR-1400’s design uses intellectual property the U.S. firm owns.
“This just shows everyone what the pecking order is,” Błażowski said. “The Americans are dealing the cards, and the Americans are saying, ‘you can do this, and you can do that.’”
Hedging With Korea, Jeopardizing Another Opportunity
South Korea, which has its own strategic importance to Poland as a major supplier to the country’s military, didn’t completely lose out. On Monday, Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister Jacek Sasin said during a visit to Seoul that KHNP would team up with Polish energy group ZE PAK and the state-owned utility PGE to build the country’s second nuclear plant at an as-yet-undetermined site.
In a photo from mid 2022, coal plants loom over Krakow’s Nowa Huta neighborhood. NurPhoto via Getty Images
But the deal could create problems for one of Poland’s most promising other options for building nuclear reactors.
Last fall, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy ― ranked by analysts among the most promising SMR developers ― agreed to sell 10 of its scaled-down reactors to Synthos, the chemical giant controlled by Poland’s richest man.
But Synthos’ partner on the SMR buildout was ZE PAK.
In an email to HuffPost, ZE PAK said it had terminated the agreement while it reconsiders the project.
Some experts believe the KHNP proposal casts a shadow over the GE Hitachi project’s future.
“Smaller reactors would be a wiser decision,” said Chris Gadomski, the lead nuclear analyst at the energy consultancy BloombergNEF.
The wartime logic propelling Europe’s shift away from fossil fuels may also favor smaller reactors, he said. Ukraine’s gigantic Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has become a major battleground since Russian forces occupied Europe’s biggest atomic station in March. If Poland wants to steel itself against invasion, a network of smaller nuclear plants with SMRs buried underground may help.
“During World War II, what did the Germans do? They built small power plants and distributed them so in case they lose one plant, it’d take out 10% of the power grid instead of 100%,” Gadomski said.
Betting the future on a giant, centralized power plant, he added, “is the wrong approach.” But Poland might also be better off waiting until after richer countries in North America deploy their own and work out the costly early kinks. The federally-owned Tennessee Valley Authority and Canada’s Ontario Power Generation are making plans to build a series of SMRs, including those from GE Hitachi.
Błażowski said there’s room for reactors of all sizes in the future Polish energy system, but that the currently existing technology is a safer bet for now.
“We need both,” said Błażowski. “We need big reactors and we need SMRs, but the SMRs are going to be a second phase of the Polish nuclear program, not the first one.”
Will The U.S. Put Up Money?
The next big challenge for the Westinghouse project in Poland is financing.
The Polish government said it would spend about $40 billion on both projects, though the split is unclear. Even more uncertain is what the funding will look like on the American side.
Asked whether the U.S. Department of Energy would provide support, a spokesperson sent an agency press release announcing the Polish agreement. But a U.S. government source with knowledge of the deal said the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation and the Export–Import Bank of the United States planned to put forward a financing plan.
Washington’s Export-Import Bank gave the United Arab Emirates $2 billion in 2012 to buy American parts for its Korean-made debut nuclear plant. In 2020, the federal credit agency set aside about $7 billion for Romania as the Eastern Bloc nation pursued new nuclear plants.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group, estimated that new reactor deals abroad could require the bank to loan as much as $75 billion in the next 15 years. But the price could go even higher as inflation, strained supply chains, and rising interest rates conspire to increase the cost of building a massive new facility.
Poland had wanted the winning developer to take a 49% stake in the power plant. But last week’s announcement did not say whether Westinghouse planned to take equity in the project, and the company did not respond to an email requesting comment. A source in Poland who requested anonymity to speak candidly about unconfirmed details of the deal said Westinghouse is pushing back against the equity plans.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki delivers a speech at an international conference on Oct. 25 in Berlin. Poland could face strict controls from the European Union on selling power. Omer Messinger via Getty Images
European Union rules make it hard for government-owned power plants to sell electricity to the internal market. But Finland pioneered a corporate ownership structure for its energy markets called the Mankala model, where power plants’ parent companies are controlled by the electricity buyers. For example, the utility giant TVO, which built Finland’s newest nuclear plant, is a Mankala company whose shareholders are Finnish municipalities and businesses.
Błażowski said he’d like Poland to follow a similar path with what he calls the Saho model, where the government assumes the risk of building a power plant but starts selling off equity to municipalities and businesses as construction progresses.
At a time when near-term energy shortages are forcing Poles to burn to trash to keep warm, spending public resources on infrastructure that won’t provide electricity for a decade or more could prove controversial.
“There is no roadmap for Poland to get away from coal,” said Katarzyna Jagiełło, a former Greenpeace campaigner who is now active in Poland’s political opposition as a Polska 2050 adviser. “My government is panicking, blindly looking for solutions, and they have no clue.”
In an interview at one of Warsaw’s many vegan cafes, she said she fears the time and money it will take to build reactors may not be well spent by Poland’s controversial ruling Law and Justice party at a moment when there is little room for error, and accused nuclear proponents in the government of silencing dissent.
“There is no roadmap for Poland to get away from coal. My government is panicking, blindly looking for solutions, and they have no clue.”
– Katarzyna Jagiełło, former Greenpeace campaigner and adviser to the opposition Polska 2050 party
“If you ask those questions, first you hear that you are sponsored by Russia and then you hear that you are a Luddite movement representative, and you are afraid of the technology,” she said. “What worries people in Poland is that the original place they want to build the power plant is in a very special place of the Polish seaside.”
Poland has recently hit new milestones in renewables, and has plans for more wind power. But the country’s dark winters make solar a tough sell. And the natural gas that most countries have used to wean off coal and backup renewables when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow is in short supply since the continent’s biggest provider, Russia, went to war.
Still, activist Konrad Skotnicki, a young climate advocate who studied Poland’s past nuclear efforts and is prominent on Polish TikTok as @doctor_z_tiktoka, told HuffPost he feels public skepticism will make it hard to maintain Poles’ faith in any nuclear projects.
But Europe’s energy crisis might be changing the conversation. Last October, a survey by UCE Research and Business Insider Polska found 45.1% of respondents were against building nuclear plants in Poland, including 28.6% strongly opposed. That compared to 38.8% in favor of construction, with 11.2% strongly supporting. The remaining 16.1% expressed no opinion, news site Notes From Poland reported.
Polls taken since the war broke out and thrust energy markets into chaos show widespread support for nuclear power.
Last August, 64% of Poles supported nuclear power, of whom 27% were strongly in favor and 37% supported speeding up construction of the plants in a survey by the pollster ARC Rynek i Opinia. Of the 13% who opposed nuclear power, 9% said they wanted the current plans withdrawn and 4% wanted them permanently shelved. Another 23% of respondents had no opinion.
“The biggest battle in nuclear,” Nelson said, “is deciding to go nuclear, not which nuclear plant.”
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Poland lays razor wire on border with Russia’s Kaliningrad
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WARSAW, Poland — Polish soldiers began laying razor wire Wednesday along Poland’s border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad after the government ordered the construction of a barrier to prevent what it fears could become another migration crisis.
Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said a recent decision by Russia’s aviation authority to launch flights from the Middle East and North Africa to Kaliningrad led him to reinforce Poland’s 210-kilometer (130-mile) border with Kaliningrad.
“Due to the disturbing information regarding the launch of flights from the Middle East and North Africa to Kaliningrad, I have decided to take measures that will strengthen the security on the Polish border with the Kaliningrad oblast by sealing this border,” Blaszczak said.
Blaszczak said the barrier along the border would be made of three rows of razor wire measuring 2½ meters (eight feet) high and 3 meters (10 feet) wide and feature an electronic monitoring system and cameras. The Polish side also will have a fence to keep animals away from the razor wire.
Before now, the sparsely inhabited border area was patrolled but had no physical barrier.
To the south, Poland’s border with Belarus became the site of a major migration crisis last year, with large numbers of people from the Middle East entering illegally. Polish and other EU leaders accused the Belarusian government — an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin — of masterminding the migration to create chaos and division within the 27-nation bloc.
Poland erected similar rolls of razor wire before building a permanent high steel wall on the border with Belarus, which was completed in June.
Blaszczak, the defense minister, said the government was persuaded to install fencing near Kaliningrad because of Poland’s experience at the Belarus border, where a similar action “prevented a hybrid attack from Belarus or significantly slowed down this attack.”
The chief executive of Khrabrovo Airport in Kaliningrad, Alexander Korytnyi, told Russia’s Interfax news agency on Oct. 3 that the facility would seek to “attract airlines from countries in the Persian Gulf and Asia,” including the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
In the last month, Poland’s Border Guard agency has not detected anyone attempting to enter the country illegally from Kaliningrad, although a few mushroom pickers wandered into the area by mistake, agency spokeswoman Miroslawa Aleksandrowicz told state news agency PAP.
Some in Poland are criticizing the barrier.
Zuzanna Dabrowska, a commentator writing for the conservative daily newpaper Rzeczpospolita, wrote Wednesday that the barrier would be ineffective and a hazard because razor wire is dangerous for animals and people who try to cross it.
She argued that people from the Middle East and Africa were still trying to illegally enter Poland from Belarus despite the border wall.
“The barrier did not scare them away, because they have no safe retreat, pressured by Belarusian border guards,” Dabrowska wrote.
Poland’s government has strongly criticized critics of the Belarus border wall, depicting them as helping those who seek to harm Poland.
The exclave of Kaliningrad, with a population of about 1 million, is the northern part of what used to be the German territory of East Prussia and became part of the Soviet Union after World War II.
It is home to the Baltic Fleet of the Russian Navy and also an industrial center. Seaside dunes and resorts, what’s left of the old Prussian architecture in the city of Kaliningrad, and maritime and amber museums are among the tourist attractions.
Soldiers began laying the razor wire in Wisztyniec, the place where the borders of Poland, Russia and Lithuania meet. Lithuania, like Poland, is a member of both NATO and the European Union.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined Wednesday to comment on the Kaliningrad border barrier, describing it as “a Polish matter.”
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Follow all AP stories on global migration at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
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Poland building wall along border with Russia’s Kaliningrad
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WARSAW, Poland — Poland’s defense minister said Wednesday that he has ordered the construction of a barrier along the border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
The move comes as Warsaw suspects that Russia plans to facilitate illegal border crossings by Asian and African migrants.
Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said the border needs to be sealed in order for Poland to feel secure. He said he had authorized the construction of a temporary barrier along the 210-kilometer (130-mile) border.
The work began on Wednesday with Polish soldiers specialized in demining carrying out preparatory work. It is due to be completed by the end of 2023.
Blaszczak said a recent decision by Russia’s aviation authority to launch flights from the Middle East and North Africa to Kaliningrad led him to take measures that would strengthen security “by sealing this border.”
A spokesman for the Border Guard agency, Konrad Szwed, told The Associated Press that the barrier would consist of an electric fence. There is currently no barrier along the border, but there are frequent patrols by border guards, he said.
Poland’s border with Belarus became the site of a major migration crisis last year, with large numbers of people crossing illegally. Poland erected a steel wall on the border with Belarus that was completed in June.
Polish and other EU leaders accused the Belarusian government — which is allied with Russian President Vladimir Putin — of masterminding the migration in order to create chaos and division within the European Union.
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Follow all AP stories on global migration at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
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Poland picks Westinghouse to build its first nuclear plant
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Poland awarded a contract to build its first nuclear power plant to a U.S. bid as the country seeks to burn less coal and increase its energy independence.
The government in Warsaw chose Westinghouse for the nuclear project, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said late Friday in a tweet praising the U.S. company’s “reliable, safe technology.”
“A strong Poland-U.S. alliance guarantees the success of our joint initiatives,” Morawiecki said.
Westinghouse reportedly beat out France’s EDF and South Korean state-run company Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power for the contract.
Polish government spokesman Piotr Mueller said on Saturday that the administration would adopt a decision at a meeting on Wednesday that will launch environmental approval and investment procedures, the Associated Press reported. Mueller said the nuclear plant in northern Poland would require improving infrastructure in the area, including roads.
U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm welcomed Warsaw’s decision, calling it a “huge step in strengthening our relationship with Poland for future generations to come.”
“This announcement also sends a clear message to Russia: We will not let them weaponize energy any longer,” Granholm said in a tweet. “The West will stand together against this unprovoked aggression, while also diversifying energy supply chains and bolstering climate cooperation.”
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Jones Hayden
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Europe’s looming Ukraine fear: What happens if the US pulls back?
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Europe is waking up to a troubling reality: It may soon lose its NATO benefactor in Ukraine.
With conservatives poised to make gains in the upcoming U.S. elections, NATO’s most generous donor to Ukraine’s war effort may suddenly seem much more parsimonious in 2023.
The possibility has put the spotlight on the gap between American and European aid.
Already, it’s been a tough sell to get all of Europe’s NATO members to dedicate 2 percent of their economic output to defense spending. Now, they are under increasing pressure from the U.S. to go even further than that. And that comes amid an already tough conversation across Europe about how to refill its own dwindling military stockpiles while simultaneously funding Ukraine’s rebuild.
Still, the mantra among U.S. Republicans — whom polls show are favored to take control of one of two chambers of Congress after the November elections — has been that Europe needs to step up.
“Our allies,” said Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, “need to start addressing the problem in their own backyard before they ask us for any more involvement.”
While European governments have opened their wallets and military stockpiles to Ukraine at record levels, Washington’s military assistance to Kyiv still dwarfs Europe’s efforts. It’s a disparity Republicans are keen to highlight as they argue Russia’s war in Ukraine is a much greater threat to Europe than it is to the U.S.
The result could be a changing tenor out of Washington if Congress falls into conservative control.
“It’s horrible what the Russians are doing,” Burchett added, but said he sees China and drug cartels as “more threatening to the United States of America than what’s going on in Ukraine.”
2 percent becomes the baseline
Since Moscow launched its assault on Ukraine, European capitals have pledged over €200 billion in new defense spending.
NATO allies pledged in 2014 to aim to move towards spending 2 percent of GDP on defense within a decade, and an increasing number of governments are taking this promise seriously. But the Biden administration wants them to go even further.
The 2 percent benchmark is just “what we would expect” from allies, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said earlier this month. “We would encourage countries to go above that 2 percent because we’re gonna have to invest more in expanding industrial bases and making sure that we’re doing the right things to replace” some of what was provided to Ukraine.
Washington’s recently released “National Security Strategy” codified those expectations.
“As we step up our own sizable contributions to NATO capabilities and readiness,” the document says, “we will count on our Allies to continue assuming greater responsibility by increasing their spending, capabilities, and contributions.”
It’s an aspiration that will be hard for many European policymakers, who themselves face economic woes at home. The U.K., for instance, has committed to hitting a 3 percent defense spending target but recently acknowledged the “shape” of its increase could change as recent policy changes roil the economy.
The Biden administration has taken a path of friendly encouragement toward Europe, rather than haranguing its partners.
But Republicans are not as keen to take such a convivial tone. And if they take control of Congress, Republicans will have more of a say over the U.S. pursestrings — and the tone emerging from Washington.
“I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine,” House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy told Punchbowl news earlier this week.
“There’s the things [the Biden administration] is not doing domestically,” he added. “Not doing the border and people begin to weigh that. Ukraine is important, but at the same time it can’t be the only thing they do and it can’t be a blank check.”
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said earlier this month that the benchmark of 2 percent of GDP spent on defense is what is expected from allies | Omar Havana/Getty Images Republicans are likely eyeing the polls, which show a slim but growing chunk of Americans saying the U.S. is providing too much support to Ukraine. The figure has risen from 7 percent in March to 20 percent in September, according to a Pew Research Center poll. And it now stands at 32 percent among Republican-leaning voters.
So while President Joe Biden continues to ask Congress to approve more Ukraine aid packages, observers say there could be more skepticism in the coming months.
“It’s becoming harder because the sense is that we’re doing it all and the Europeans aren’t,” said Max Bergmann, director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
And while noting that “in some ways, that’s unfair” due to the economic cost of the war to Europe, he said that on the military side aid for Ukraine and spending on defense industrial capacity is now “the new 2 percent.”
In European capitals, policymakers are watching Washington closely.
“For Europeans, the idea that U.S. politics matters — that what happens in the midterm election will have implications for what will be expected of us from [our] U.S. ally — is something that is taken more and more seriously,” said Martin Quencez, a research fellow at the German Marshall Fund’s Paris office.
The Brussels view
But back in Brussels, some officials insist there’s little reason for worry.
“There is broad, bipartisan support for Ukraine,” said David McAllister, chair of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee.
Indeed, while the more Donald Trump-friendly wing of the Republican Party is opposed to continuing aid to Ukraine, more traditional Republicans have actually supported Biden’s aid for Kyiv.
“If there was a Republican majority in congressional committees, I expect an impact on debates about which weapons to supply to Ukraine, for example,” McAllister said in an email. “Ultimately, though, the president maintains considerable control over foreign policy.”
McAllister, a member of Germany’s conservative Christian Democratic Union, said Europe is already increasing its defensive investments and aid to Kyiv, pointing to an EU initiative to train Ukrainian soldiers and a recent bump up for an EU fund that reimburses countries for military supplies sent to Ukraine.
Polish MEP Witold Waszczykowski, the Foreign Affairs Committee’s vice chair, also said in an email that he doesn’t expect a Republican-dominated Congress to shift Ukraine policy — while urging Washington to put more pressure on Europe.
“Poland and other Eastern flank countries cannot persuade Europeans enough to support Ukraine,” said Waszczykowski, a member of the conservative ruling Law and Justice party.
The “smell of appeasement and expectations to come back to business as usual with Russia,” the Polish politician said, “dominates in European capitals and European institutions.”
Cristina Gallardo contributed reporting.
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Lili Bayer
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Oil flow to Germany resumes after Poland fixed pipeline leak
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WARSAW, Poland — The Polish operator of an oil pipeline running to Germany said Saturday that it has fixed the damage that caused a leak earlier this week and that the flow of crude oil from Russia has been fully restored.
The state-run operator, PERN, said that both lines of the Druzhba pipeline were operating normally, transporting oil.
It said that the cause of the leak that occurred Tuesday in a field in central Poland is still being investigated.
The Druzhba pipeline, which in Russian means “Friendship,” was built in the 1960s and is one of the world’s largest pipeline systems, bringing crude oil from Siberia to central Europe. It branches to reach Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Austria and Germany.
The leak follows attacks last month on the Baltic Sea Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, in which explosives are said to have been used. Europe has been taking steps to reduce its reliance on Russian energy after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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Elon Musk balks at funding Ukraine’s Starlink satellites, as envoy tells him to ‘fuck off’
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Elon Musk said on Friday he’s “just following the recommendation” of a Ukrainian diplomat who told the SpaceX founder to “fuck off,” by seeking to offload responsibility for funding his Starlink internet terminals in Ukraine.
Musk’s trolling came after Ukraine’s former Ambassador to Germany Andrij Melnyk and the country’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reacted with hostility to Musk last week tweeting a series of Kremlin talking points, which he presented as a plan for peace in Russia’s war on Ukraine. This raised concerns in Kyiv and among its allies as to whether Musk was still on Ukraine’s side in the war.
Musk’s tweet came in response to a CNN report that SpaceX had warned in a letter, dated September 8 and sent to the U.S. Department of Defense, that it can no longer afford to provide its Starlink terminals, which are crucial for Ukraine’s military communication.
“We are not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time,” SpaceX said in the letter, which was signed by the company’s director of government sales, adding that the Pentagon should take over the funding.
The Starlink satellite communication system has been crucial not only for Ukraine’s military communication, but also for the government to maintain contact with commanders, for Zelenskyy to conduct interviews with journalists, and for civilian communications, connecting loved ones via the encrypted satellites.
Funding the systems would cost more than $120 million for the rest of the year and the price tag could reach almost $400 million for the next 12 months, according to SpaceX.
Ukraine has received around 20,000 Starlink satellite units. Musk said last week that the “operation has cost SpaceX $80 million and will exceed $100 million by the end of the year.”
Musk was initially lauded for providing the Starlink terminals to Ukraine, but according to the SpaceX letter, the vast majority were partially or fully funded by other parties, including the U.S. government, the U.K. and Poland. Poland is the largest single contributor and has paid for almost 9,000 terminals, which cost $1,500 and $2,500 for the two models sent to Ukraine, according to the documents.
Those governments also paid for a third of the internet connectivity while SpaceX funded the rest, making up the more expensive part of the bill, according to SpaceX.
Among the documents seen by CNN is also a request from Ukrainian General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi to SpaceX for almost 8,000 more Starlink terminals. SpaceX reportedly responded by recommending the request be sent to the U.S. Department of Defense.
The spat comes shortly after recent reports of Starlink outages, which have disrupted crucial Ukrainian military communication on the front lines.
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Wilhelmine Preussen
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Skeleton of woman suspected of being a vampire in 17th century found in Poland
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Skeleton of woman suspected of being a vampire in 17th century found in Poland – CBS News
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Ukraine joins Spain and Portugal’s joint bid to host 2030 World Cup
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Soccer Football – Carabao Cup Final – Chelsea v Liverpool – Wembley Stadium, London, Britain – February 27, 2022 Liverpool fan with the big screen in the background in support of Ukraine before the match Action Images via Reuters/John Sibley TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
John Sibley Reuters
Ukraine has joined Spain and Portugal in their bid to host the 2030 World Cup.
The partnership between the three countries was confirmed by leaders of the countries’ three soccer federations at UEFA headquarters Wednesday.
“This is the dream of millions of Ukrainian fans. The dream of people who survived the horrors of war or are still in the occupied territories, over which the Ukrainian flag will surely fly soon,” said Andriy Pavelko, president of Ukraine’s soccer federation, at a news conference Wednesday.
He said the move was sanctioned by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ukraine has been under full-scale invasion by Russia since February.
Details were not given on how many games would be held in Ukraine, or in which cities, but the Olympic Stadium in Kyiv hosted the finals of the 2012 European Championship and the 2018 Champions League.
“Now it’s not the Iberian bid, it’s the European bid,” Spain’s soccer federation president, Luis Rubiales, said at the news conference, according to the Associated Press. “Together we represent the power of transformation football has in society.”
Spain and Portugal previously announced their joint bid in June 2021. The new bid faces competition from a collaboration between Egypt, Greece and Saudi Arabia, and a South American bid between Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay and Chile.
FIFA will vote to choose the host in 2024.
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Belarus opposition hopeful at Russian setbacks in Ukraine
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WARSAW, Poland — Belarus’ opposition leader said Wednesday that she believes Russian military setbacks in Ukraine could shake the hold on power of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
“We have a distracted Russia that is about to lose this war. It won’t be able to prop Lukashenko up with money and military support as in 2020,” said Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, speaking at a security conference in Warsaw.
Tsikhanouskaya fled to Lithuania after Russian ally Alexander Lukashenko claimed victory in disputed August 2020 elections that were viewed in the West as fraudulent, and which many thought she won.
She said that hundreds of Belarusian volunteers have supported Ukrainians in their recent liberation of Ukrainian territory.
“As I speak, a Belarusian battalion is part of Ukraine’s counter-offensive chasing the invaders away. We all understand that the speed of changes at the Ukrainian front opens new opportunities for Belarus. And it’s moving so fast,” she said at the Warsaw Security Forum.
“We keep our fingers crossed for our military volunteers in Ukraine. Fifteen lost their lives already.” she said.
Russia is facing mounting setbacks in Ukraine as Ukrainian forces retake more and more land in the east and in the south — the very regions Russia has said it seeks to annex.
Tsikhanouskaya hailed the Belarusian partisans who carried out acts of sabotage early in the war on the railway system in Belarus to hamper the Russians in their assault on Ukraine, and said Belarusians would continue to oppose the war as they can.
“We are preparing our partisans, you know, to act decisively at this very moment. The acts of sabotage that took place in February and March can be repeated again, though people who are making these acts of sabotage can face death penalty,” she said.
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9 Central, East Europe NATO countries condemn Russia annexations
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The presidents of nine NATO countries in central and eastern Europe declared on Sunday that they would never recognize the annexation by Russia of several Ukrainian regions. Hungary and Bulgaria were conspicuously absent from the signatories.
In a joint statement, the leaders also supported a path to NATO membership for Ukraine.
The nine leaders demanded that “Russia immediately withdraw from all occupied territories” and encouraged “all allies to substantially increase their military aid to Ukraine,” according to the statement.
“We reiterate our support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine,” they wrote.
The statement comes two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin declared he was annexing four Ukrainian regions, a move the West has described as an illegal land-grab. It was signed by the presidents of Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro and North Macedonia.
The signatories also wrote that they “firmly stand behind” a NATO decision in 2008 over Ukraine’s future membership to the alliance. At the time, NATO allies pledged that Ukraine would eventually become a member. But as that process stalled over the years, it seemed increasingly unlikely that Ukraine’s bid would become a reality.
In the wake of the annexations, Ukraine formally applied for a fast-track accession to NATO, with hopes to jump-start its membership bid.
On Sunday, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tweeted that 10 NATO countries supported Ukraine’s membership to the alliance — including many countries that used to belong to the former Soviet bloc.
NATO countries however have hesitated at including a new member that is at war — and by treaty they would be forced to defend. In recent months, NATO has also welcomed the application of two new countries in Europe – Finland and Sweden, spurred by security concerns after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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Clea Caulcutt
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Toxic algae blamed for 300 tons of dead fish in Oder River on German-Polish border:
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Germany said Friday that mass fish deaths in the Oder River were a “man-made environmental disaster,” blaming toxic algae growth sparked by the introduction of salt into the waters.
Presenting a report into the disaster that saw at least 300 tons of dead fish pulled from the river in Germany and Poland this summer, the German environment ministry said the most likely cause was “a sudden increase in salinity.”
The “introduced salt” led to “massive proliferation of a brackish water algae that is toxic to fish,” it said.
Frank Hammerschmidt / AP
However, “due to a lack of available information, the experts had to leave open what caused the unnaturally high salt content,” it added.
German Environment Minister Steffi Lemke said it was clear that “human activity” was to blame.
Polish authorities had on Thursday released a separate report that also blamed toxic algae for the fish deaths. More than 500 firefighters took part in the efforts to clean up the mess on the Polish side of the river this summer.
But the Polish report said the disaster had most likely been caused by poor water quality as a result of high temperatures and very low water levels over the summer.
Poland and Germany have long been at odds over the disaster.
Berlin initially accused Warsaw of failing to communicate the problem, while Poland slammed Germany for spreading “fake news” about the discovery of herbicides and pesticides in the water.
A report in Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine on Friday accused Polish authorities of failing to cooperate with their German counterparts to investigate the fish deaths.
Polish authorities became “more and more reserved, in some cases almost secretive”, Lilian Busse, the head of the investigation, was cited as saying.
The Spiegel report said Greenpeace investigations had shown high salt levels at a copper mine in the city of Glogow may have contributed to the disaster.
“It is obvious to me that the Polish government wants to cover up the causes of the fish kill in the Oder,” Ralph Lenkert, environmental policy spokesman for the far-left Die Linke party, told the magazine.
In August, Sascha Maier, a water policy officer at the BUND environmental organization, told CBS News that it was not only fish affected. Many other animals, including mussels and small vertebrates in and around the river have also suffered, Maier said.
The ecosystem was already under great stress this summer, Maier told CBS News, thanks to extreme heat and hardly any rainfall. Those conditions very likely exacerbated the problem, at least, because the lower water volume means a higher concentration of any toxic substances present.
“Because of the low water, we have a warm Oder River,” he said. That alone can cause significant physical stress for many fish species, and “if pollution is then added, they are less resistant.”
Patrick Pleul/picture alliance/Getty
Anna Noryskiewicz contributed to this report.
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‘No matter the law, no matter the stigma, no matter the cost.’ This European network helps people access abortions | CNN
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Editor’s Note: This story is part of As Equals, CNN’s ongoing series on gender inequality. For information about how the series is funded and more, check out our FAQs.
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
CNN
—
It’s early evening in an affluent neighborhood in the Dutch city of Haarlem and bed and breakfast owners Arnoud and Marika are waiting for their next guest to arrive. They’ve prepared their single room for her, a brightly colored space with massive windows overlooking a leafy drive.
The traveller is a woman from France. She’s only staying one night, but her hosts want her to feel at home because she’s not here on vacation. She’s come to have a second-trimester abortion.
The Netherlands is one of just a few countries in Europe where access to abortion is possible past 12 weeks of pregnancy, and Arnoud and Marika’s guest is one of around 3,000 people from abroad who have accessed one annually in recent years.
Here, abortions for non-Dutch residents can be carried out until 22 weeks, according to Dutch abortion providers, and nationals can access terminations up to 24 weeks.
In the United Kingdom (with the exception of Northern Ireland), it’s possible for anyone to get an abortion until 24 weeks, and for a very limited set of circumstances afterwards, however Brexit has made it increasingly more difficult for people to travel there. And in Spain, abortions past 14 weeks of pregnancy are only legal under extremely limited circumstances, although abortion rights groups say the law is often interpreted loosely.
The restrictions mean that, for many in their second trimester, the Netherlands is their last chance to access a safe abortion. By opening up their home, Arnoud and Marika have become part of a grassroots network of people helping to facilitate that access.
“This is a house without taboos,” Arnoud told CNN. Arnoud and Marika are pseudonyms that CNN agreed to use over concerns that the couple’s B&B – which is also where they live – will be targeted by anti-abortion protesters.
Now in their 70s, the retired pair have made it their mission to be a welcoming point of entry for the people they host, many of whom they receive bleary eyed from a long day or more of travel, punctuated by weeks of anxiety and stress leading up to the journey.
“They are so relieved, they have made this terrible journey, and they come in and they’re crying,” Marika said. “I love to be a light for them.”
Arnoud and Marika look through messages written by their guests in their B&B in Haarlem. Photo: Kara Fox/CNN
Arnoud and Marika’s guest book. “Thanks for the kind words that cheered me up,” a message from a Polish guest in September reads. Photo: Kara Fox/CNN
Since they opened their B&B seven years ago, Arnoud and Marika say they have hosted around 350 people seeking abortion care from across Europe. They explain that some came alone, others were joined by partners or friends, while some brought their family.
At first, the majority of their guests came from France and Germany, where abortion is available until 14 and 12 weeks of pregnancy, respectively. (France extended that time limit from 12 to 14 weeks earlier this year.) They say they have also hosted a number of women from other European countries including Belgium and Luxembourg, and Romania. One woman traveled from as far as the Caribbean island of Martinique, they said.
But in recent years data shows the demographics have changed, with an influx of people now traveling to the Netherlands from Poland, after the country’s highest court further tightened its abortion laws – which were already among the strictest in Europe.
The numbers coming to the Netherlands from Poland have swelled further as Ukrainians displaced there due to the war find they need to seek safe abortion access beyond Polish borders.
In October 2020, Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal banned virtually all abortions, allowing them only in circumstances where the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest, or if the pregnant person’s life was at risk. The law came into effect the following January. Prior to this, abortions were also allowed in the case of fetal abnormalities – which accounted for approximately 97% of all known legal terminations carried out in Poland in 2019, according to data from the Polish Ministry of Health.
The change in the law has left many people in Poland without legal access to safe terminations in their own country, and has created an even more hostile environment for abortion rights activists and those seeking abortions.
When asked about the worsening climate for those seeking or providing abortions in Poland, a statement provided to CNN by the Polish government simply reiterated the law, saying: “In the event of a situation that threatens the life or health of a pregnant woman (e.g. suspected infection of the uterine cavity, hemorrhage, etc.) …it is lawful to terminate a pregnancy immediately.”
“The decision whether there are circumstances in which the pregnancy threatens the life or health of the pregnant woman is and can only be made by a doctor in a specific case,” the statement added.
But abortion rights activists say the law has created a chilling effect on healthcare providers, with some doctors appearing more fearful of potential repercussions that include prosecution than doing everything they can to save a pregnant person’s life. Three pregnant women have died in Polish hospitals after being denied an abortion since the court decision, according to Abortion Support Network, a UK-based organization that helps people in Poland obtain abortion care as part of the Abortion Without Borders (AWB) network.
AWB was formed in response to the Polish government’s long standing proposals to ban abortion in 2019.
The grassroots feminist network is made up of six organizations from Poland, the UK, Germany and the Netherlands. They say the Polish state is failing women and have made it their mission to ensure safe access to abortion for any reason a person chooses to have one – including whether the pregnancy is wanted or not.
“We don’t want to make you feel like you have to explain yourself, and that you have to earn your abortion with a sob story,” said Polish abortion rights activist Kasia Roszak.
Roszak, who now lives in Amsterdam where she works with Abortion Network Amsterdam (part of AWB), says she knows exactly how it feels to not have agency over her reproductive rights, which is one of the reasons she works to ensure access for anyone globally who needs it.
“We believe that abortions are part of life. It can be an empowering, positive experience. And if it’s not, if it’s something hard for you, then we’re going to give you space and validation of your feelings,” Roszak said. “I feel like it’s my responsibility to be able to share with people that there are options.”
From December 2020 to December 2021, AWB says they helped 32,000 people from Poland access abortions across Europe – an almost six-fold increase from the previous year.
In 2021, the network says they facilitated travel for 1,186 people in Poland – more than quadruple the number of people they supported with travel in 2020. More than half of those people travelled to the Netherlands, making up 52% of the total they helped to visit the country for abortions that year, according to AWB.
Official 2021 data from the Dutch government shows 651 people from Poland had abortions in the Netherlands, more than double the number of people in 2020.
“Effectively, we took over all [of Poland’s] fetal anomaly cases,” said Roszak. Numbers previously hovered around 1,000 cases a year in Poland, according to government data.
The network gets connected with people who need their help through a process like this: A person with an unwanted pregnancy will first call a hotline in Poland, where they have two options, depending on how far along they are: take pills or travel for a procedure.
If they are less than 12 weeks pregnant, they are sent the abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol – approved by the World Health Organization – to take in the privacy of their own home. This is the case for the majority of the people who reach out to them, according to AWB data.
However, for people whose pregnancies have already passed the 12-week mark, they will likely need to travel to a clinic abroad. This is also the case for those living in other European countries where laws prohibit abortions after the first trimester. For these people, the network taps into its web of volunteers and activists who will work around the clock to arrange appointments at clinics, translate documentation and provide financial assistance to help meet the cost of the procedure and related travel.
Second trimester abortions may be available in the Netherlands but they are expensive for non-Dutch residents, costing up to 1,100 euros (roughly $1,100) for the surgical procedure which typically takes no longer than 20 minutes. Counselling, preparation for the procedure and recovery however require the better part of a day.
Depending on each individual circumstance, assistance arrives in many ways and AWB may cover all or part of the costs, which can include flights, accommodation, and handling appointments with the treatment center directly.
Money is raised mostly from private donations, according to activists within the AWB network, but some of the organizations within it are supported by big donors. Without financial assistance, abortion travel is especially prohibitive for working-class people, migrants and others living in poverty.
Kinga Jelińska, Executive Director of the Amsterdam-based group Women Help Women – which is also part of AWB – told CNN: “We return abortion back to common people, no matter the law, no matter the stigma, no matter the cost.”
Second-trimester abortions constitute a relatively small proportion of the total number of officially recorded abortions in high-income countries. The vast majority are carried out in the first trimester.
Those seeking second-trimester abortions do so for a number of reasons, including not having previously realized they were pregnant; a change in personal circumstances such as financial difficulties or the breakdown of a relationship; unexpected medical problems in themselves or the fetus, and trauma surrounding rape and sexual abuse cases, which can also be a reason that one might not recognize the pregnancy until it is too late to access an abortion in their country.
“People sometimes think that it’s a matter of fundamental principles and beliefs. [But]we see day after day, people coming to us and saying… ‘I used to be against abortion, but my situation is different,’ Jelińska explained.”The decision whether to continue the pregnancy or not, is highly contextual.”
At the Bloemenhove clinic in Haarlem, one of two clinics in the country that offer abortions past 18 weeks, the parking lot looks “like the United Nations,” Roszak quipped, referencing the fact that car registration plates can be seen from all over Europe.
The clinic, a bright and modern space with a peaceful garden area, treats approximately 15 people a day, 4 days a week, according to its director, Femke van Straaten. But the influx of Polish patients has, van Straaten said, led to a shift in the way that her team works.
Prior to the Polish court ruling, more than half of the patients at Bloemenhove were Dutch and most came to terminate unwanted pregnancies, van Straaten explained. As such, staff were able to recommend in-country aftercare, including counseling resources.
Now, with more patients coming to the clinic from Poland with wanted pregnancies (many of whom came for terminations due to fetal abnormalities), they have “different needs for care,” said van Straaten.
One of the ways the clinic responded was to establish a memorial at a local cemetery for women to find some closure for their unviable pregnancies.
“They couldn’t take their child back home, and they had no place for their grievance,” said van Straaten, who helped organize the memorial last year at the suggestion of the Polish abortion rights network. She added that memorial services are also available for people carrying viable fetuses who chose to terminate their pregnancies.
As part of this aftercare, patients can opt for a cremation and are permitted to take the ashes home. For those who can’t wait for cremation, the cemetery offers to scatter the ashes on the site, where a steel tree has been erected and babies’ names are engraved onto a rainbow of leaves that hang on its branches.
The “Little Stars Meadow,” a memorial space for people to grieve and find closure at the Haarlem cemetery. Photo: Kara Fox/CNN
Engraved “leaves” on the memorial tree. Van Straaten says her team decided to use the word “stillborns” for the terminated pregnancies – the closest word in English that they could find – to help people who wanted their babies acknowledge their loss and move forward.. Photo: Kara Fox/CNN
Dr. Elles Garcia, an abortion care provider at Bloemenhove since 2016, works to assuage concerns that some people – particularly those from Poland – have about returning home after their termination.
“They often ask me the question: ‘What do I tell my gynaecologist? Can I tell them that I had a miscarriage?’ They’re so afraid of getting back to their doctor in their own country and to tell them the truth – they can’t,” she said from one of the clinic’s consultation rooms.
Garcia said that while she assures patients that medically, their doctors back at home won’t be able to know whether they had a miscarriage or an abortion, she still encourages them to be honest about what they went through, not only for themselves, but in hopes it might start to break down societal taboos.
“I tell them to say that you were here for an abortion, because here it’s legal – you can tell them the truth,” she said, before acknowledging, “but then they get afraid and anxious.”
To help people prepare to return to a society where abortion is both restricted and taboo, the AWB Polish helpline has also expanded its remit to provide aftercare, including psychological counseling for those in need.
Back at their B&B, Arnoud and Marika are reflecting on the past several years of providing hospitality to people at a difficult time in their lives.
Only around a third of their guests stay for two nights, they say, the majority return to their countries of origin straight from the clinic. And so the relationships are fleeting, but the septuagenarians know their impact can be profound. They see their job as being to listen and reassure.
“People come from the room and ask: ‘Can we talk to each other?’ said Arnoud, explaining that guests often gather around their dining room table or sit in their garden for a chat if they stay the second night.
The couple say that while they were never planning on becoming a hub for abortion travel when they first decided to open their business, they can’t imagine their B&B in any other way.
But unlike most business owners, they say they relish the day when their business might go bust.
“When the law changes in France, like we have in Holland, when the law changes in Poland, like we have here, it will be better – I will sing a song,” Arnoud said.
He looks to Marika and adds: “Our business is not important. It’s more important that women can decide for themselves … that’s the most important.”
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Weird Facts
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The first Polish language dictionary (published in 1746) included definitions such as: “Horse: Everyone knows what a horse is.”
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