Here’s where things stand on Saturday 19 July 2025:

Fighting

• Russian drones and glide bombs killed several people in Ukraine on Friday, officials said, including a 52-year-old train driver in the Dnipropetrovsk region, a 66-year-old woman killed in her home in Kostiantynivka, and a 64-year-old man killed in a glide bomb attack on a building site in the Zaporizhia region.
• Russian forces have staged a mass drone attack on the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odesa, setting fire to at least one multistorey apartment building, the city’s mayor, Gennadiy Trukhanov, said early on Saturday. At least 20 drones converged on the city in the early hours of this morning.
• Russian air defences intercepted or destroyed 10 Ukrainian drones headed for Moscow overnight on Friday, the city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said.
• Ukraine’s top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskii, said his forces are standing firm in defending the city of Pokrovsk, a logistics hub in the eastern Donetsk region that has weathered months of Russian attacks, and the Novopavlivka settlement in the Zaporizhia region.
• Praising the troops defending Pokrovsk, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces “trying to advance and enter Ukrainian cities and villages” will not have “a chance of survival”.
• Authorities in Russian-controlled Crimea have introduced an information blackout designed to counter Ukrainian drone, missile and sabotage attacks. Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-installed head of Crimea, said he signed a decree banning media outlets and social media users from publishing photos, video or other content that revealed the location of Russian forces or details of Ukrainian attacks on the Black Sea peninsula.

Military aid

• Australia’s government said it delivered M1A1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine as part of a 245 million Australian dollar ($160m) package to help the country defend itself against Russia in their ongoing war.
• The United States has moved Germany ahead of Switzerland to receive the next Patriot air defence systems to come off production lines in the US. The expedited delivery to Germany will allow Berlin to send two Patriot batteries it already has to Ukraine, according to a US media report.
• Leaders in Ukraine and Washington are in detailed talks on a deal involving US investment in Kyiv’s domestic drone production, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said. She added the deal would also lead to the US purchasing “a large batch of Ukrainian drones”.
• President Zelenskyy said he discussed missile supplies and funding for interceptor drones to counteract Russian attacks in a call with French President Emmanuel Macron. “I would especially like to highlight our agreement on pilot training for Mirage jets – France is ready to train additional pilots using additional aircraft,” Zelenskyy said on X.

Sanctions

• The European Union approved its 18th package of sanctions against Russia over its war in Ukraine, aimed at dealing further blows to Russia’s oil and energy industry.
• Eighteen officers working for Russian military intelligence, known as the GRU, along with three units, have been hit with sanctions by the United Kingdom over their role in a 2022 bomb attack on a theatre in southern Ukraine that killed hundreds of civilians. The officers were also accused of targeting the family of a former Russian spy who was later poisoned in the UK with a nerve agent.
• President Zelenskyy thanked the European Union for the latest sanctions targeting Russia and called for further punitive measures against Moscow. “This decision is essential and timely, especially now, as a response to the fact that Russia has intensified the brutality of the strikes on our cities and villages,” he said.
• Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said the Russian economy would withstand the EU sanctions package and said Moscow would intensify its strikes against Ukraine. India has said it does not support “unilateral sanctions” by the EU, after Brussels imposed penalties on Russia that included a Rosneft oil refinery in the western Indian state of Gujarat.
• Greek tanker operators involved in shipping approved Russian oil exports are expected to continue doing so despite the new wave of tougher sanctions by the EU that will further tighten restrictions, shipping sources told the Reuters news agency.
• WhatsApp should prepare to leave the Russian market, a lawmaker in Moscow who regulates the IT sector said on Friday, warning that the messaging app owned by Meta Platforms is very likely to be put on a list of restricted software in Russia.

Politics and diplomacy

• The Kremlin said that it did not believe the tougher stance that Donald Trump has adopted towards Russia over its war in Ukraine means the end of US-Russia talks aimed at reviving their battered ties.
• The Kremlin also said that it agreed with a statement by Zelenskyy that there needed to be more momentum around peace talks between the warring sides.
• Zelenskyy appointed former Defence Minister Rustem Umerov as the secretary of the country’s National Security and Defence Council, according to a decree published on Friday on the president’s website. Umerov’s appointment follows a reshuffle of the Ukrainian government and the appointment of a new prime minister.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed Ukraine during a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday, the Kremlin press service said. Putin said Russia was “committed to a political and diplomatic settlement of the conflict in Ukraine” and thanked Erdogan for facilitating Russia-Ukraine bilateral talks.
• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has cast doubt on the possibility of Ukraine joining the EU by 2034, saying accession was unlikely to come at a point affecting the bloc’s medium-term finance plans, which run to 2034. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had said Kyiv could join the EU before 2030 if the country continues its reforms.
• Russian courts sentenced 135 people to lengthy prison sentences in connection with a mass anti-Israel protest in October 2023 at an airport in the predominantly Muslim Dagestan region, the country’s Investigative Committee said on Friday. Hundreds of anti-Israel protesters stormed an airport in the city of Makhachkala, where a plane from Tel Aviv had just arrived, over Israel’s war on Gaza.

Regional security

• Russia views recent comments by a top US general about NATO’s ability to swiftly capture the Russian Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad as hostile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. General Christopher Donahue, the US Army Europe and Africa commander, said NATO could seize Kaliningrad “from the ground in a timeframe that is unheard of and faster than we’ve ever been able to do”, according to a report.
• Almost a third of Italians believe the country will be directly involved in a war within five years, but only 16 percent of those of fighting age would be willing to take up arms, a new survey shows.
• The survey by the Centre for Social Investment Studies showed 39 percent of Italians aged between 18 and 45 would declare themselves as pacifist conscientious objectors, 19 percent would try to evade conscription another way, and 26 percent would prefer Italy to hire foreign mercenaries.

Genocide or tragedy? Ukraine, Poland at odds over Volyn massacre of 1943

More than 80 years ago, members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army – hailed as heroes for standing up to the Soviet Union – stormed villages and slaughtered tens of thousands of ethnic Poles.

Nadiya escaped the rapists and killers only because her father hid her in a haystack amidst the shooting, shouting and bloodshed that took place 82 years ago.

“He covered me with hay and told me not to get out no matter what,” the 94-year-old woman told Al Jazeera – and asked to withhold her last name and personal details.

On  July 11, 1943, members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA), a nationalist paramilitary group armed with axes, knives and guns, stormed Nadiya’s village on the Polish-Ukrainian border, killing ethnic Polish men and raping women.

“They also killed anyone who tried to protect the Poles,” Nadiya said.

The nonagenarian is frail and doesn’t go out much, but her face, framed by milky white hair, lights up when she recalls the names and birthdays of her grand- and great-grandchildren.

She also remembers the names of her neighbours who were killed or forced to flee to Poland, even though her parents never spoke about the attack, now known as the Volyn massacre.

“The Soviets forbade it,” Nadiya said, noting how Moscow demonised the UIA, which kept fighting the Soviets until the early 1950s.

Nadiya said her account may enrage today’s Ukrainian nationalists who lionise fighters of the UIA for having championed freedom from Moscow during World War II.

After Communist purges, violent atheism, forced collectivisation and a famine that killed millions of Ukrainians, the UIA leaders chose what they thought was the lesser of two evils. They sided with Nazi Germany, which invaded the USSR in 1941.

In the end, though, the Nazis refused to carve out an independent Ukraine and threw one of the UIA’s leaders, Stepan Bandera, into a concentration camp.

But another UIA leader, Roman Shukhevych, was accused of playing a role in the Holocaust – and in the mass killings of ethnic Poles in what is now the western Ukrainian region of Volyn and adjacent areas in 1943.

Genocide?

Up to 100,000 civilian Poles, including women and children, were stabbed, axed, beaten or burned to death during the Volyn massacre, according to survivors, Polish historians and officials who consider it a “genocide”.

“What’s horrifying isn’t the numbers but the way the murders were carried out,” Robert Derevenda of the Polish Institute of National Memory told Polskie Radio on July 11.

This year, the Polish parliament decreed July 11 as “The Volyn Massacre Day” in remembrance of the 1943 killings.

“A martyr’s death for just being Polish deserves to be commemorated,” the bill said.

“From Poland’s viewpoint, yes, this is a tragedy of the Polish people, and Poland is fully entitled to commemorate it,” Kyiv-based analyst Igar Tyshkevych told Al Jazeera.

However, rightist Polish politicians may use the day to promote anti-Ukrainian narratives, and a harsh response from Kyiv may further trigger tensions, he said.

“All of these processes ideally should be a matter of discussion among historians, not politicians,” he added.

Ukrainian politicians and historians, meanwhile, call the Volyn massacre a “tragedy”. They cite a lower death toll and accuse the Polish army of the reciprocal killing of tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians.

In post-Soviet Ukraine, UIA leaders Bandera and Shukhevych have often been hailed as national heroes, and hundreds of streets, city squares and other landmarks are named after them.

Evolving views and politics

“[The USSR] branded ‘Banderite’ any proponent of Ukraine’s independence or even any average person who stood for the legitimacy of public representation of Ukrainian culture,” Kyiv-based human rights advocate Vyacheslav Likhachyov told Al Jazeera.

The demonisation backfired when many advocates of Ukraine’s independence began to sympathise with Bandera and the UIA, “turning a blind eye to their radicalism, xenophobia and political violence”, he said.

In  the 2000s, anti-Russian Ukrainian leaders began to celebrate the UIA, despite objections from many Ukrainians, especially in the eastern and southern regions.

These days, the UIA is seen through a somewhat myopic prism of Ukraine’s ongoing war with Russia, according to Likhachyov.

Ukraine’s political establishment sees the Volyn massacre and armed skirmishes between Ukrainians and Poles as only “a war related to the Ukrainians’ ‘fight for their land’”, according to Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher at Bremen University in Germany.

“And during a war, they say, anything happens, and a village, where the majority is on the enemy’s side, is considered a ‘legitimate target’,” he explained.

Many right-leaning Ukrainian youngsters “fully accepted” Bandera’s radicalism and the cult of militant nationalism, he said.

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, thousands of far-right nationalists rallied throughout Ukraine to commemorate Bandera’s January 1 birthday.

“Bandera is our father, Ukraine is our mother,” they chanted.

Within hours, the Polish and Israeli embassies issued declarations in protest, reminding them of the UIA’s role in the Holocaust and the Volyn massacre.

Far-right activists began volunteering to fight Moscow-backed separatists in southeastern Ukraine in 2014 and enlisted in droves in 2022.

“In the situational threat to [Ukraine’s] very existence, there’s no room for reflection and self-analysis,” rights advocate Likhachyov said.

Warsaw, meanwhile, will keep using the Volyn massacre to make demands for concessions while threatening to oppose Ukraine’s integration into the European Union, he said.

As for Moscow, it “traditionally plays” the dispute to sow discord between Kyiv and Warsaw, analyst Tyshkevych said, and to accuse Ukrainian leaders of “neo-Nazi” proclivities.

Is reconciliation possible?

Today, memories of the Volyn massacre remain deeply contested. For many Ukrainians, the UIA’s image as freedom fighters has been bolstered by Russia’s 2022 invasion, somewhat pushing aside reflection on the group’s role in the World War II atrocities.

For Poland, commemoration of the massacre has become a marker of national trauma and, at times, a point of leverage in political disputes with Ukraine.

In April, Polish experts began exhuming the remnants of the Volyn massacre victims in the western Ukrainian village of Puzhniky after Kyiv lifted a seven-year moratorium on such exhumations. Some believe this may be a first step in overcoming the tensions over the Volyn massacre.

Reconciliation, historians say, won’t come easily.

“The way to reconciliation is often painful and requires people to accept historical realities they’re uncomfortable with,” Ivar Dale, a senior policy adviser with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, a human rights watchdog, told Al Jazeera.

“Both [Poland and Ukraine] are modern European democracies that  can handle an objective investigation of past atrocities in ways that a country like Russia unfortunately can not,” he said.

In a joint statement, the defence ministers of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland said since signing the Ottawa Treaty, threats from Moscow and its ally Belarus have “significantly increased”.

It is “paramount” to give their troops “flexibility and freedom of choice” to defend Nato’s eastern flank, they said.

The Ottawa Treaty, also known as the Mine Ban Treaty, came into force in 1997. It aims to ban anti-personnel mines – those aimed at humans – worldwide, and has been signed by more than 160 countries.

But some major military powers – including China, India, Russia, Pakistan, and the US – never signed up to the treaty.

All of the Baltic states had signed the convention by 2005, while Poland did the same in 2012.

In their joint statement on Tuesday, the nations’ defence ministers said, however, that the security situation in their region since signing the treaty had “significantly deteriorated”.

“In light of these considerations, we… unanimously recommend withdrawing from the Ottawa Convention.

“With this decision, we are sending a clear message: our countries are prepared and can use every necessary measure to defend our territory and freedom,” the defence ministers wrote.

But they stressed that despite plans to leave the treaty, Poland and the Baltic states are still committed to international humanitarian laws, “including the protection of civilians during armed conflict”.

“Our nations will continue to uphold these principles while addressing our security needs,” they wrote.

All four countries are in the Nato alliance, and all four share borders with Russia.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Baltic states and Poland have hugely increased military spending, and leant a great deal of support to Ukraine.

According to the Kiel Institute think tank, by percentage of GDP, the Baltic States and Poland are among the highest donors of aid to Ukraine.

Ukraine is a signatory to the Ottawa Treaty, although it has received land mines from the US during Russia’s full-scale invasion, and in the past has told the UN that due to Russia’s invasion it cannot guarantee it is abiding by the treaty.

Article 20 of the convention specifically states however that a nation cannot withdraw from the treaty if it is currently at war.

The UN estimates the Ukraine is now the most mined nation in the world.

In the presidential palace in Warsaw, he told me that it would make Poland stronger and safer, as it faces Russia.

Viewed from Poland, President Putin’s Russia is a clear and a present danger.

President Duda, who is also commander-in-chief of the rapidly expanding Polish armed forces, said today’s Russia is at least as aggressive as the former Soviet Union.

He condemned what he called Moscow’s imperial greed.

Positioning US nuclear weapons in Poland would be viewed by President Putin as a provocation.

But President Duda views the proposal as a defensive measure to strengthen deterrence.

He said it would be a response to President Putin’s 2023 decision to deploy Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, which has a border with Poland and Ukraine.

“It’s the same Russia that’s attacking Ukraine today, who is an aggressor, who is murdering civilians, who is bombing down civilian settlements,” he told me.

“And it’s moving its nuclear weapons from the depths of Russia to Belarus.”

“This defensive tactic is a vital response to Russia’s behaviour, relocating nuclear weapons in the NATO area. Poland is ready to host this nuclear weapon.”

President Duda also welcomed proposals made by France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, to extend the French nuclear weapons umbrella to other Nato states.

The US already rotates about 10,000 troops at a time through Poland.

When asked how the presence of nuclear weapons would make Poland safer, Mr Duda said it would deepen America’s commitment to Polish security.

“Every strategic kind of infrastructure, American and Nato infrastructure, which we have on our soil is strengthening the inclination of the US and the North Atlantic Alliance to defend this territory.”

Poland spends almost 5% of its national income on defence. That is more than any other member of Nato, including the United States.

Last week, Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, made a speech in parliament warning that a “profound change in American geopolitics” was putting both Poland and Ukraine into an “objectively more difficult situation”.

Prime Minister Tusk called for further increases in Polish defence spending and proposed that Poland should consider reaching for “opportunities related to nuclear weapons.”

Mr Tusk is on the centre left, unlike President Duda who is on the right and considers himself a friend of Donald Trump.

Referring to President Putin’s refusal on Thursday to agree immediately to the 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine, Mr Duda said he was confident that the US president had a plan, as he put it, to “to encourage the Russian side to act reasonably”.

Mr Duda will not criticise Mr Trump nor accept that his actions and words have cast a doubt on the US commitment to Article 5, the mutual defence clause of the North Atlantic Treaty.

But he has much harsher words for Putin’s Russia than Donald Trump ever uses.

And he backs calls for the EU to seize Russian assets worth around 200 billion euros that have been frozen in European banks.

“I believe it is obvious that Russian assets collected and locked in banks in Western Europe should be used to support Ukraine, and it should be a double support,” he says.

“First of all, Ukraine should be supported in defending itself against the Russian aggression. And secondly, this should be used to support the rebuilding of Ukraine.”

“I cannot imagine that after the destruction of Ukraine, Russia can simply take this money away without paying war reparations and compensation.”

Musk said on X that Ukraine’s “entire front line” would collapse if he turned the system off. Radoslaw Sikorski responded, saying his country paid for its use in Ukraine and a threat to shut it down would result in a search for another network.

Rubio dismissed Sikorski’s claims and told him to be grateful, while Musk called him a “small man”.

The exchange appeared to lead to Polish PM Donald Tusk calling on his country’s allies to show respect for their weaker partners, rather than arrogance.

Starlink’s system is part of SpaceX’s venture to provide high-speed internet to remote and underserved areas. It has been used extensively by the Ukrainian military.

Sunday’s exchange started when Musk posted that Starlink was the “backbone of the Ukrainian army” and that “their entire front line would collapse if I turned it off”.

Sikorski then responded, saying that Poland was paying for the service.

“Starlinks for Ukraine are paid for by the Polish Digitization Ministry at the cost of about $50 million per year,” Sikorski wrote. “The ethics of threatening the victim of aggression apart, if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider we will be forced to look for other suppliers.”

In response, Rubio said Sikorski was “just making things up… no-one has made any threats about cutting Ukraine off from Starlink”.

“And say thank you because without Starlink Ukraine would have lost this war long ago and Russians would be on the border with Poland right now,” he added.

Musk later responded to Sikorski’s post calling him a “small man”.

“Be quiet, small man. You pay a tiny fraction of the cost. And there is no substitute for Starlink,” he wrote.

On Monday morning Polish Prime Minister Tusk, without specifying who or what he was referring to, wrote on X: “True leadership means respect for partners and allies.

“Even for the smaller and weaker ones. Never arrogance. Dear friends, think about it.”

The Starlink terminals are key to Ukraine’s army operations and have been used since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022.

There are tens of thousands of terminals in the country, including up to 500 bought by the US Department of Defence in June 2023.

In a speech to the Polish parliament, Tusk said the government aimed to give full details in the coming months.

Efforts are being made to “prepare large-scale military training for every adult male in Poland,” he told the Sejm.

“We will try to have a model ready by the end of this year so that every adult male in Poland is trained in the event of war, so that this reserve is comparable and adequate to the potential threats.”

Tusk said the Ukrainian army has 800,000 soldiers, whilst Russia has around 1.3 million and he wants to increase the size of the Polish army, including reservists, to 500,000 from around 200,000 now.

“We’re talking about the need to have an army of half a million in Poland, including the reservists,” he said.

“It seems if we organise things wisely, and I’m talking constantly with the Minister of Defence, we will have to use several courses of action. That means the reservists, but also intensive training to make those who do not go into the army fully-fledged and competent soldiers during a conflict,” he added.

Tusk said women may also undergo military training, but “war, is still to a greater extent the domain of men”.

Poland is already planning to spend 4.7% of its economic output on defence this year, the highest proportion in the Nato alliance.

Tusk told parliament that spending should increase to 5% of GDP.

Earlier, President Duda proposed amending the constitution to make defence spending at a level of 4% of GDP compulsory

The prime minister also said he supports Poland withdrawing from the Ottawa convention that bans the use of antipersonnel landmines, and also possibly from the Dublin convention that bans the use of cluster munitions.

Poland has ramped up defence spending since Russia’s full-scale invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in 2022.

It has signed arms contracts worth around $20bn (£15.5bn) with the United States to buy 250 M1A2 Abrams battle tanks, 32 F-35 jets, 96 Apache helicopters, Javelin missiles, and artillery rocket systems.

Warsaw has also signed contracts with South Korea to purchase K2 tanks and FA-50 light combat aircraft.

There is growing anxiety among Poles about their future security following US President Donald Trump’s decision to suspend military supplies to Ukraine. Most Poles believe supporting Ukraine is in their own security interests.

Mirosław Kaznowski, the deputy mayor of the town Milanówek just outside Warsaw, told BBC News this week that a friend of his has decided to invest in a start-up to build low-cost underground bomb shelters for businesses and homes.

His friend said interest was high, he added.

“I immediately thought of a sci-fi movie where it looked like a troop formation about to attack,” Simon Eriksson, a workman from Malmo, told the Swedish state broadcaster.

The pyrotechnics were in fact caused by a Space X Falcon 9 rocket re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere. There are reports of sightings in Denmark, Sweden and England.

Pieces of the rocket then crashed into Poland and, experts say, may also have landed in Ukraine.

At around 10:00 local time (09:00 GMT), Adam Borucki was astonished to find what appeared to be a charred tank measuring around 1.5m by 1m behind his warehouse in Komorniki, Poland.

“When we came to work, we found a total mess with broken power poles in the storage yard,” Mr Borucki told the BBC.

He said that some that some electrical items and a concrete block stored in the warehouse were also damaged.

“I felt surprised but also a little scared. But ultimately, I’m glad no-one was hurt,” he added.

Mr Borucki contacted the police who, working alongside the Polish space agency Polsa, determined that the unidentified object was debris from a Falcon 9 rocket, manufactured by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX.

“We are investigating how the object ended up in this location, but the important thing is that no-one was harmed,” police spokesperson Andrzej Borowiak said.

A similar piece of debris was discovered in a forest near the Polish village of Wiry, according to Polish police.

Polsa has confirmed that “an uncontrolled re-entry of the Falcon 9 rocket’s second stage occurred between 04:46 and 04:48 on February 19, 2025, over Poland”.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is used to transport people and payloads into the Earth’s thermosphere and sometimes beyond. It is designed to be reusable.

The rocket which created this debris was launched by SpaceX from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on 1 February.

“It was supposed to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere in a controlled manner and crash into the Pacific Ocean,” Harvard University astrophysicist Dr Jonathan McDowell told the BBC.

“But the engine failed. We’ve seen it orbiting Earth for the past few weeks and we were anticipating an uncontrolled re-entry today, which is what people saw burning in the sky.

“The debris zipped over England at around 17,000 mph, then parts of Scandinavia then parts crashed into eastern Europe at a few hundred miles an hour.”

Space debris from rockets and satellites re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere several times a month. Usually pieces of space debris are entirely burned up by Earth’s atmosphere but larger piece can fall to earth. According to Dr McDowell, an uncontrolled large rocket re-entry is rare and has the potential to be dangerous.

“So far, we’ve been lucky and no-one has been hurt but the more we put into the Earth’s orbit, the more likely it is that our luck will run out,” he said.

“This is the fourth incident recently with a SpaceX Falcon which is causing concern. It looks like glitches like this engine failure are becoming more common.”

So far large pieces of debris have been confirmed in Poland but Dr McDowell suspects that pieces have crashed into western Ukraine where the comet-like streaks of light in the sky “were clearly visible”.

“It’s quite the omen for how our civilisation is changing,” he added.

Andrzej Duda told the BBC that the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which have not been used since 2022, “should be dismantled”.

This, he said, would mean the likes of Germany would not be tempted to restore Russian supplies to boost its own struggling economy.

“I can only hope that European leaders will learn lessons from Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and that they will push through a decision to never restore the pumping of gas through this pipeline,” he said.

The Polish president, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, insisted that economic sanctions against Russia were working and European countries should resist pressure from companies to re-establish business links.

The Nord Stream gas pipelines were built by Russia’s gas giant Gazprom and run between Russia and northern Germany.

Nord Stream 1 was shut down in 2022 and Nord Stream 2 was never used, following the invasion of Ukraine. Both were damaged by explosions in 2022.

Gas prices in Europe surged after the shutdown and, in recent months, politicians from Germany’s far right AfD party have suggested the Nord Stream gas pipes should resume operations.

Germany will hold federal elections at the end of February.

“I believe the Nord Stream pipelines should be dismantled,” Duda said. “This pipeline causes a very big threat to Ukraine, to Poland, to Slovakia but also to other Central European countries.”

He added: “It is a threat from the point of view of energy, from the point of view of the military but also it is a huge economic threat because it means a domination of Russia over Europe in the economic sense.”

On the prospect of a deal between Ukraine and Russia now that US President Donald Trump has taken office, Duda insisted that no peace talks could take place without the participation of Ukraine.

“I’m saying that in my capacity as president of the Republic of Poland, as a neighbour to Ukraine and also as president of a country who has had very hard historic experiences itself,” he said.

“I’m speaking here and referring to World War Two and to Yalta where we were not included in those talks, where certain agreements were made beyond our heads and then we found ourselves behind the Iron Curtain, where, for almost 50 years, we were part of the Soviet sphere of influence,” he said.

Trump had previously said he would negotiate a settlement to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine launched in February 2022 in 24 hours – he has since acknowledged it could take some time.

Duda said it would be “a violation of international law” for Russia to be allowed to hold on to territory it has occupied in Ukraine.

President Vladimir Putin has said he is prepared to negotiate an end to the war, which first began in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea, but Ukraine would have to accept the reality of Russian territorial gains, which are currently about 20% of its land.

Putin also refuses to accept Ukraine joining Nato, the military alliance of Western countries.

Duda said: “The international community cannot agree, and it is unacceptable that Russia would take certain territories of Ukraine and keep them by force. This is unacceptable.

“We must not let Russia win this war.”

Duda said Trump “understands the region” and US involvement would be key.

“President Donald Trump – as the leader of the most powerful country within Nato, as the leader of the most powerful economy – will be of key importance,” said Duda.

“I am waiting peacefully for the first steps which will be taken by Donald Trump.”

Netanyahu faces an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes in Israel’s war on Gaza.

“The Polish government treats the safe participation of the leaders of Israel in the commemorations on January 27, 2025, as part of paying tribute to the Jewish nation, millions of whose daughters and sons became victims of the Holocaust carried out by the Third Reich,” read the resolution, published by the office of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Thursday.

Tusk told reporters that “whether it is the prime minister, the president or the minister – as it is currently declared – of education of Israel, whoever will come to Oswiecim for the celebrations in Auschwitz will be assured of safety and will not be detained.”

In November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his ex-defence minister Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas commander Ibrahim a-Masri, also known as Mohammed Deif, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Israel has condemned the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, saying that it has acted in self-defence triggered by Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel.

As  a member state of the ICC, Poland is required to detain suspects facing arrest warrants if they set foot on their soil, but the court has no way to enforce that. Israel is not a member of the ICC and disputes its jurisdiction.

On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that Poland’s President Andrzej Duda wrote to Tusk asking that Netanyahu be allowed to attend the commemoration “unhindered”, given the event’s exceptional nature.

Malgorzata Paprocka, the head of Duda’s office, confirmed to state news agency PAP on Thursday that a letter had been sent.

“In the opinion of the president, there is one issue – precisely because it is the Auschwitz camp, every person from Israel, every representative of the authorities of this country should have the opportunity to take part in this exceptional event,” she said.

Prime Minister Tusk, who signed the resolution, said he had received information from the Israeli embassy that the country would be represented by its education minister.

Netanyahu has not said whether he would attend the Auschwitz commemoration. He has attended previous anniversary events at Auschwitz.

Over 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, died in gas chambers or from starvation, cold and disease at Auschwitz, which Nazi Germany set up in occupied Poland during World War II.

Marcin Romanowski, 48, is facing 11 charges in Poland, including defrauding or attempting to defraud $40m (£32m; €39m) from a justice fund meant to help victims of crime when he served as deputy justice minister under the previous Law and Justice-led government between 2019 and 2023.

“We consider the decision of Viktor Orban’s government to grant political asylum to M.Romanowski, a suspect in criminal offences and wanted under a European Arrest Warrant, to be an act hostile to the Republic of Poland and the principles of the European Union,” Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski wrote on X on Thursday night.

“Tomorrow we will announce our decisions.”

On Friday, the foreign ministry said it was summoning Hungary’s ambassador to the country and would request the European Commission to launch proceedings against Budapest if it fails to fulfil its EU obligations.

Mr Romanowski was responsible for the justice fund under the previous government that lost power in 2023’s election.

An audit found that only 40% of the funds’ resources went to crime victims and former prisoner rehabilitation, and that contracts were issued at the minister’s discretion without due competitive process.

Mr Romanowski denies the charges.

He fled to Hungary, saying he would not receive a fair trial in his homeland because of politicised prosecutors and judges under Poland’s current pro-EU coalition government under Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

Such reasoning was mocked by governing officials given that the Law and Justice-led government Mr Romanowski served in was widely condemned by international judicial bodies, the European Commission and European courts for introducing reform that politicised the judiciary.

Mr Tusk’s government is trying to undo that reform because it created a two-tier judicial system of judges appointed under Law and Justice and older judges, some of whom do not recognise the new judges because they consider their appointments unlawful.

Until Thursday night, the 48-year-old opposition MP had not been seen for almost two weeks.

He reportedly had not used his phones or bank cards since 6 December and failed to attend a court hearing three days later that ruled he be remanded in custody before trial.

On Thursday, a European Arrest Warrant was issued by a Warsaw court acting on prosecutors’ information he had fled to an EU country.There had been speculation that Mr Romanowski was in hiding in Hungary.

On Thursday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said the current Polish government was treating Hungary as an enemy and he would offer refuge to anyone facing political persecution in Poland.

Mr Orban and Poland’s Law and Justice party share ideological goals even though they fell out over Russia’s invasion and war against Ukraine.

They broadly agree that what they consider a liberal EU-elite is driving Europe away from its Christian traditions and eroding member states’ sovereignty.

Mr Romanowski is reportedly a member of conservative Catholic group Opus Dei, who issued a denial earlier this week that the MP was being hidden by them.

In October 2022, he told a Polish Catholic radio station that LGBT+ was “institutionalised deviancy”.