Head of the National Security Bureau (BBN) Sławomir Cenckiewicz responded sharply to a post by Minister of National Defence Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, accusing him of hypocrisy and of invoking a political tradition that his political camp had previously fought against. As proof of what he called the lie and duplicity of the leader of the Polish People’s Party, Cenckiewicz published a 2009 letter from President Lech Kaczyński in which he protested against the pro-Russian policy of Donald Tusk’s government.
The dispute began with a post by Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, Deputy Prime Minister and head of the Ministry of National Defence (MON), who wrote:
After today’s “performances” by the ministers of the President’s Chancellery, it is worth asking – in the matter of eastern policy, is the president closer to the direction of the Kaczyński brothers or to Braun’s Confederation?
Sławomir Cenckiewicz, who since the summer of 2025 has served as head of the National Security Bureau (BBN), reacted decisively to this statement. In a long post, he argued that it was risky for a politician who had been part of the government of Donald Tusk and Waldemar Pawlak to refer positively to the tradition of the Kaczyński brothers’ “direction” in eastern policy. Cenckiewicz reminded readers that Kosiniak-Kamysz served in that government as Minister of Labour and Social Policy, and that this was a “time of brutal struggle against President Lech Kaczyński (and his brother), as a supposed russophobe”.
Your government – in which you were a minister – was a pro-Russian government, and at the same time a government waging a fight precisely against the “direction” of the Kaczyński brothers’ eastern policy! – wrote the head of the BBN emphatically.
“Lethal policy” and the role of the PSL
Cenckiewicz accused the Polish People’s Party (PSL), led by Kosiniak-Kamysz, of playing a “special role” in pro-Russian policy.
He pointed to the actions of then Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy Waldemar Pawlak, which aimed to increase volumes of Russian gas supplies from 3 to 11 billion m³, a move that would have made Poland dependent on Russia for energy until 2037.
The historian also recalled the words of President Lech Kaczyński himself, who had described Tusk’s policy as “lethal”. Cenckiewicz quoted the president saying: “Poland is at this moment seemingly increasing the weight of these [Russian] influences – this is a lethal policy from the point of view of Poland and Europe!”, adding that “no one summed up that policy of yours better than President Kaczyński himself!”
The published letter of Lech Kaczyński
At the end of his post, Cenckiewicz published a scan of a letter President Lech Kaczyński sent on 13 November 2009 to Prime Minister Donald Tusk. As the head of the BBN noted, this letter – “found years ago in the Archive of the President of the Republic of Poland” – serves to “protest against falsehood and hypocrisy”.
In the document, the late President Kaczyński expressed deep concern over negotiations on a gas contract with Russia. He asked, among other things, about the reasons for increasing gas supply volumes and extending the Yamal contract by as much as 15 years, which in his view deepened “Poland’s dependence on supplies of a strategic raw material from a single direction and source”.
The president also asked why the government agreed to increase Russian shares in the EuRoPol GAZ company and whether the Polish side had obtained an assessment of the economic consequences of the agreement with Russia.
Lech Kaczyński also raised the issue of the lack of diversification of supplies, asking Prime Minister Tusk why construction of the LNG terminal in Świnoujście was being delayed and whether the government planned to connect Poland’s gas system to the onshore section of the Nord Stream pipeline.
The letter ends with a call for the prime minister to take a position on these issues, which were crucial for the country’s energy security.