Poland holds credible information that Russia is again planning provocations, and it is publicizing that fact to stop Moscow from acting, Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said in Warsaw, Polish broadcaster RMF24 reported. Speaking alongside his French counterpart on 9 July, he set the intelligence against a long list of Russian covert operations across Europe. Sikorski framed exposure as a weapon that has worked against the Kremlin before.
“The Russians are again planning something”
Sikorski and French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot faced questions about recent media reports, including in the Washington Post, that Russia is actively considering attacks on NATO targets and that the US has warned allies. Sikorski declined to comment on what intelligence services say. Poland’s deputy prime minister, he still left no doubt about the broader picture.
“But the fact that Russia is waging a hybrid and kinetic war against both France and Poland is no secret,” he said.
Sikorski added:
“That the Russians attack our systems of party competition, our critical infrastructure, or use shadow-fleet ships to map critical infrastructure — all of this is known. But also arson, attacks on rail tracks, drone attacks, and sending death squads to kill Vladimir Putin’s enemies — all of these are hostile activities. We do nothing of the sort in Russia.”
Polish FM warns Putin’s retaliatory rhetoric sounds like “an announcement of a provocation”
The 2022 precedent: exposure works
Sikorski recalled that before invading Ukraine, Russia intended to stage classic false-flag provocations to hand itself a pretext for the attack.
“Back then, the services of the United States warned about this, and that deterred Russia from carrying out those provocations,” he said.
The same logic drives today’s disclosure: “The aim of these warnings is to deter them from carrying out these provocations. And may it be so,” Sikorski told a journalist.
He aired a similar caution in June, saying the Kremlin could stage a false-flag operation within the next two years.
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