Poland Holds Anti-Terrorism Emergency Meeting: Threats Against Senior Government Officials Emerge Alongside Three School Attacks in One Week

Polish security agencies convened an anti-terrorism emergency meeting on Sunday. Police had earlier received an email claiming possible attacks on Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz. The meeting was ordered by Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński and Minister for Special Services Coordination Tomasz Siemoniak, and was scheduled for 11 a.m. local time at the Counter-Terrorism Centre of the Internal Security Agency under the Interior Ministry.

According to The Times of India, citing a statement posted on X by Interior Ministry spokesperson Karolina Gałecka, the relevant threat information had been received by police, but the specific source and originator remained unclear, and police had not disclosed further details. The private radio station Radio Zet first reported the source of the email.

Days before the meeting, three school attacks occurred within one week in Poland's central Mazovia Province. On Wednesday, a 19-year-old vocational college student injured nine people with a sharp object on and off campus, including classmates, teachers, and passersby; on Thursday, a 15-year-old used a knife at his former school to kill one school employee and injure two others; on Saturday, a 21-year-old woman injured three people inside a post-secondary institution attached to a secondary school in Warsaw. Citing Associated Press figures, The Times of India reported that as of Sunday morning, Polish police had detained 117 people nationwide on suspicion of carrying dangerous weapons such as knives or threatening attacks on schools and classmates; authorities had completed security checks on approximately 64,000 schools.

At a Sunday crisis meeting of government and security officials, Tusk characterized the school attacks as "spontaneous acts" driven by online "glorification of violence." He stated publicly: "We are not facing any large-scale organized group." He also acknowledged that "some of those detained were active in far-right circles," and pointed out that searches for and attention to Nazi-related content and serial killer-style figures were rising in Poland and globally.

Alongside the school bloodshed, rumors of a coordinated "Bloody Friday" attack circulated briefly among parent online groups and mainstream media, prompting preventive closures of 59 schools on Friday in Mazovia Province and elsewhere. The rumors have not been officially confirmed. Tusk said police inspections of schools will continue into next week, and he called on parents and teachers to engage with young people on internet use and exposure to extremist content.

Within the broader security narrative, Tusk publicly warned in September that Russia might intensify "hybrid attacks" on NATO's eastern flank. According to Reuters, in August police arrested a 23-year-old man on charges including incitement to assassinate senior Polish political figures. Tusk himself disclosed in 2024 that he had received threats following the assassination attempt on Slovak Prime Minister Fico. As a key member of NATO's eastern flank, Poland's role in underwriting the anti-Russia "hybrid war" narrative carries both an early-warning function and naturally lends political weight to its own security discourse.

As of the time of writing, the threats against Tusk and Kosiniak-Kamysz remain under police investigation, and whether there is any connection between them and the school attacks remains undetermined.