Under the Polish constitution, the council advises the president on national security matters, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.
The body consists of presidential aides, senior government officials and lawmakers.
At Friday’s meeting, which will be held behind closed doors, Poland’s President Andrzej Duda is set to brief participants on the outcome of recent international consultations amid tensions with Russia over Ukraine.
Duda last week discussed Russia's aggressive policies with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. He later took part in a video call with US President Joe Biden and the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Britain and the European Union.
Meanwhile on Thursday, the president’s foreign policy aide Jakub Kumoch and national security advisor Paweł Soloch held talks with their Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian counterparts in Vilnius.
Assertive towards Russia
Kumoch told reporters afterwards that as long as Russia "pursued an aggressive policy," the Baltic states "must feel concern."
He said that Poland represented “the core of the Bucharest Nine group of countries” that helped convince Western partners to be assertive in their dealings with Russia.
“We are no longer debating whether we can make concessions to Russia, only what will be done after Moscow continues to escalate,” Kumoch added.
Russia has recently amassed over 100,000 troops near its border with Ukraine, while demanding that NATO remove infrastructure from its eastern flank and not expand further eastwards.
The Bucharest Nine (B9) is a Polish-Romanian initiative launched in 2015 that aims to help exchange views and coordinate positions on the security of NATO’s eastern-flank countries. It brings together Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, and Slovakia.
The Polish National Security Council previously convened at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, the IAR news agency reported.
(pm/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP