Footwear from the regime’s concentration camps ended up at the Polish base, and campaigners want them to be salvaged At the foot of a pine tree, Grzegorz Kwiatkowski bent to touch the black, moist shapes nestling amid the fungi and leaf mulch. “I’ve been monitoring this area now since 2015, and always hope I won’t stumble upon anything any more and that one day the entire area will have been cleared,” he said. This, however, was not that day. The 39-year-old poet, scholar and rock musician was walking in the forest just metres from the perimeter fence of what was once the Stutthof Nazi concent ..read more

Rishi Sunak has announced that UK defence spending would be boosted to 2.5% of GDP by 2030. 'Over the next six years, we’ll invest an additional £75bn in our defence. And it will be fully funded with no increase in borrowing or debt,' he said on a visit to Poland, adding that UK spending would be put on a 'war footing' UK to boost defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, Sunak says UK politics – latest updates ..read more

PM pledges to put arms industry on ‘war footing’ with plan to raise defence budget to £87bn a year by 2030 Britain will boost its defence spending to 2.5% of national output by the end of the decade as Rishi Sunak pledged to put the UK’s arms industry on a “war footing” in response to global threats. The prime minister’s plan, which he said would help the UK deal with an “increasingly dangerous” world, would steadily increase defence spending to £87bn a year by 2030 ..read more

Polish director Besaleel’s film will feature an AI-rendered Russian president and footage shot by Ukrainian film-makers during the Russian invasion The “world premiere” of a new biopic of Russian president Vladimir Putin featuring an AI-rendered central character, has been announced for 26 September. In a statement released via PR Leap, Polish studio AIO said the film, titled Putin, will be released in 35 countries, and describes itself as “up close and personal with the Kremlin leader’s story”. First announced in May 2022, Putin is the English-language debut of Polish director Besaleel, also ..read more

PM pledges equipment including 400 vehicles, 1,600 weapons and 4m rounds of ammunition, plus £500m in funding Rishi Sunak has promised the UK’s largest ever military support package for Ukraine as he warned that Vladimir Putin would “not stop at the Polish border” if Russia won the war. The prime minister will visit Poland on Tuesday to discuss European security and the threat from Russia with the Polish leader, Donald Tusk, and the Nato secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, before travelling to Germany to meet the chancellor, Olaf Scholz ..read more

Two Polish citizens detained earlier on suspicion of attacking Russian opposition figure Leonid Volkov in Lithuania A Belarusian national has been detained in Poland on suspicion of ordering the attack on a top Russian opposition leader, Leonid Volkov, on Moscow’s behalf, the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, has announced. Volkov, a close aide of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, was briefly admitted to hospital last month after he was ambushed and attacked outside his house in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. The assailant smashed open Volkov’s car window and repeatedly struck h ..read more

Poland’s national prosecutor says man was preparing to share security details of airport used by Ukrainian president A Polish man has been arrested on allegations that he aided a plot by Russian intelligence services to assassinate the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, according to Polish and Ukrainian prosecutors. The office of Poland’s national prosecutor said in a statement that the man, identified only as Pawel K, was accused of being prepared to pass airport security information to Russian agents and that he was arrested in Poland on Wednesday ..read more

Painter replaced as country’s representative by centrist coalition is showing his work under the banner ‘Polonia Uncensored’ In a world beset by culture wars – not to mention full-scale wars – it is no surprise that political tensions seethe beneath the surface of the Venice Biennale, a global art event. Take Poland. Its national pavilion this year hosts work by a collective, Open Group, from neighbouring Ukraine. But the artists were last-minute replacements for a painter, Ignacy Czwartos, who was selected to represent his country under Poland’s previous, rightwing government – and then desel ..read more

Andrzej Duda’s visit comes as European leaders prepare for Trump’s possible return to White House Andrzej Duda, Poland’s conservative president, is expected to meet Donald Trump in New York on Wednesday evening, as some European politicians begin preparing for Trump’s possible return to the White House. Many mainstream European leaders fear the potential impact of a US that is less engaged on the continent, and less committed to the future of Ukraine ..read more

This live blog is now closed, you can read more on this story here The Polish parliament has voted in favour of sending all four bills on abortion to a special commission. Two of the bills are aimed at legalising abortion up to the 12th week of pregnancy and another is focused on decriminalisation. The fourth, introduced by the conservative Third Way alliance, seeks a return to strict 1993 laws ..read more