Der Spiegel reported Tuesday that Kremlin-backed operations are hitting Poland harder than most of its neighbors, part of a broader pattern of hybrid warfare rattling the alliance's eastern flank. The magazine posed the question directly: has Poland become "a laboratory for the war of the future"?
Recent incidents elsewhere in the region illustrate the trend, according to the report. NATO scrambled jets from its Baltic Air Policing mission over a possible threat near Lucyn in eastern Latvia, close to the Russian border, and authorities in Romania detected an unidentified object in the country's northeastern airspace on Tuesday.
But Poland has borne the brunt of it. Der Spiegel singled out a May 2024 fire at a shopping center on Marywilska Street in Warsaw — which the magazine described as sabotage carried out on behalf of Russian intelligence — as the most striking example. It also pointed to a foiled November 2025 plot to blow up tracks on a strategically important rail line, an act Polish authorities have attributed to two Ukrainian nationals working for Russia.
The pattern, the magazine argued, reflects Moscow's view of Poland as an especially determined adversary — a perception rooted in centuries of conflict. Der Spiegel traced that history back to Russia's role in partitioning Poland in the 18th century and the Soviet Union's early alliance with Hitler, followed by the killing of as many as 22,000 Poles by Soviet security services at Katyń and nearby sites in 1940.
More recently, Poland has positioned itself as one of Kyiv's most committed backers. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the country has served as a central logistics hub for weapons bound for Ukraine and has taken in millions of refugees on a temporary or permanent basis, Der Spiegel noted.
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Source: PAP