“Are these systemic loopholes, or are state services simply inherently ineffective for some reason? I lean toward the latter thesis, because nearly every crisis situation that goes beyond routine procedures triggers chaos and poor decision-making,” commented former Internal Security Agency (ABW) officer Lt. Col. Dr. Marek Świerczek in an interview with the Niezalezna.pl portal.
Recently, Poland has witnessed a series of false alarms that led security services to enter the apartments and homes of journalists from TV Republika, including members of the station’s top management headed by Tomasz Sakiewicz, as well as attempts to gain access to the station itself. There was also an attempted forced entry into the apartment of former National Security Bureau (BBN) head Prof. Sławomir Cenckiewicz, along with an entry into the family home of Polish President Karol Nawrocki, all of which appeared to be carefully planned and executed.
The Niezalezna.pl portal asked former ABW officer Lt. Col. Dr. Marek Świerczek to comment on the matter. Below is a brief interview.
- How should these operations be viewed in the long term? The list includes kinetic actions such as a series of fires, drones, and balloons entering Polish airspace, railway sabotage, as well as non-kinetic actions such as mass false bomb threats in schools and cascading false emergency reports to security services, which resulted, among other things, in the forced entry into the family home of Polish President Karol Nawrocki.
We do not know whether these events are connected. We are discussing this based on publicly available information. Still, it would be necessary to check how many such incidents occurred in previous years (excluding the case related to the president’s residence, editor’s note). Russian drones and smuggling balloons had been appearing in Poland years before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, although I do not have quantitative data. The intrusion of a flock of “primankas” (decoys, editor’s translation) showed no signs of provocation, because the Russians, through the Belarusians, warned us in advance about their arrival. In any case, they did not need to test us because they had already done so earlier with a missile that flew almost all the way to Bydgoszcz (where the NATO Training Centre is located) and was eventually found by mushroom pickers.
As for cascading bomb threats and harassment through false reports, it would also be necessary to examine how this looked over a period of several years. Regarding railway saboteurs, in my opinion, one hypothesis is that it may have been an operation intended to divert the attention of security services away from a more significant operation being carried out elsewhere.
It is highly unlikely that this constitutes “testing the resilience of Poland’s systems,” because the mass use of such a tool would inevitably force changes within the targeted institutions, thereby making future operations more difficult for the Russians themselves. Response-testing is usually carried out selectively to gather information, not by forcing the opponent to introduce systemic changes.
- However, we can clearly see the testing of systemic loopholes, including within broadly understood alert systems.
That seems beyond doubt. The question is whether these are genuine systemic loopholes or whether state services are simply inherently ineffective for some reason. I lean toward the latter explanation because nearly every crisis situation that goes beyond routine procedures results in chaos and poor decisions.
- That is not a particularly reassuring conclusion for the overall security system. Increasingly strong voices argue that such a situation leads to state destabilization and, to some extent, to the destabilization of the services themselves and a loss of public trust.
Let us not dramatize the situation, especially without knowing historical statistical data. The destabilization of the state is being caused by escalating political polarization and the progressive erosion of the state through widespread clientelism, cronyism, and the weakening of civic attitudes. And this is not limited to the elites, as demonstrated by the fact that 70 percent of young people declare that they would flee Poland in the event of war. Harassment through false reports is a symptom, not the cause.
- What conclusions can be drawn from this entire situation, and what benefits could it bring for improving Poland’s security? What should be done?
For me, the entire controversy surrounding these phenomena has a positive dimension. As I said earlier, the media response has a chance to force changes within state institutions that have become complacent, which could potentially protect us against the large-scale use of such tools in the event of a conflict.