Polish police have detained a man suspected of planning an assassination attack on Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, officials said on Sunday. Tusk announced the arrest on X, writing that the man who had threatened to carry out an attack had been detained, and thanked police for their "swift and decisive action".
According to the Interior Ministry, the alarm was raised when an email describing a possible attack reached the State Protection Service, the body responsible for ministers' security, which passed it to police. Unofficial sources cited by RFI said the message listed addresses where the two men were expected to stay, along with their travel plans for the coming days. Polish security services convened an emergency meeting, and a spokesman for the Special Services Co-ordinator, Jacek Dobrzynski, said the threat was being treated as "deadly serious". He noted that the services receive dozens, even hundreds, of such reports every day and have the tools to assess their credibility, but said this case was well substantiated by agents and there was a strong likelihood the threats could be carried out.
The suspect, a Polish national, was arrested in Lower Silesia, a region in south-western Poland, Dobrzynski told local media. Interior Minister Marcin Kierwinski also confirmed the arrest. Authorities have not publicly released the suspect's identity, background or the intended method of attack.
Some details have emerged through Polish media. The newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza quoted an official close to the prime minister as saying the threat came from "the circle of right-wing extremists" and that the perpetrators were reportedly Polish. Broadcaster TVN24, which said it had seen the email, reported that its author had been in contact via social media with a radical organisation said to be seeking people willing to carry out a firearms attack. The author reportedly spoke with a man about weapons, hatred of the government and plans for a mass killing. These accounts have not been confirmed by officials. RFI noted that the possibility of Russian interference has neither been officially raised nor ruled out.
Dobrzynski also remarked that threats of all kinds are multiplying "month after month, year after year". Tusk has been prime minister since 2023, having previously held the post from 2007 to 2014, and later served as president of the European Council from 2014 to 2019. The case underlines the security pressures facing senior European politicians, though investigators have yet to say what charges the suspect may face or how far any plot had progressed.