Piotr Müller, the government spokesman, explains that Poland participates in intelligence cooperation between different services and they mutually confirm the information on the basis of their own intelligence sources. The information gathered jointly by all services confirms the serious risk of the Russian invasion, because the troops that have been gathered for months are still close to the Ukrainian borders and are ready to take offensive action at any time.

The government spokesman said that although Russian troops are ready to strike at any time, he hopes that diplomatic actions threatening Russia with sanctions will slow down the decision to invade or make it impossible in practice.

Piotr Müller confirmed that the government is aware of a possible refugee crisis in the case of war.

“First of all, we want to stop such flows from Ukraine. We must be prepared, but we want to stop them by supplying materials to Ukraine, including weapons that will support defense of the Ukrainian-Russian border. If there are such flows, we will try to be prepared as much as possible. At the same time, I would like to emphasize that the Ukrainians would be potential real refugees, not like on the Polish-Belarusian border”.

In recent weeks the administration urgently asked local governments to indicate facilities where refugees could be accommodated and to determine the possible number of people to be admitted.

Mariusz Kamiński, the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration emphasizes that due to the situation in Ukraine the government is preparing various scenarios. One of them is reacting by the voivodes to the possible influx of refugees from Ukraine who, due to a possible conflict, may seek a safe haven in Poland.

Adrian Andrzejewski