Poland’s Tusk calls security meeting to discuss spy threat from Russia and Belarus

WARSAW (Reuters) – Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called a meeting of the Secret Services Council for Wednesday to discuss “alleged Russian and Belarusian influence in the Polish power apparatus in previous years”, he wrote on social media platform X on Tuesday.

As a hub for Western military supplies to neighbouring Ukraine during the more than two-year-old war with Russia, Poland has been on heightened alert for spying.

On Monday, the government said it was verifying if a Polish judge, who had access to confidential information and asked for political asylum in Belarus, had been spying.

“We must be aware that services, in this case Belarusian ones, worked with a person who had direct access to the Minister of Justice… who had access to various classified documents to which no intelligence service should have had access,” Tusk said before a government meeting earlier on Tuesday.

“The fact that judge (Tomasz) Szmydt’s relationship with Belarusians has a long history, that it is not a matter of recent months, must be a cause for deep concern.”