According to the Hebrew news website, Zman Yisrael, a source in the firm said that the equipment was being sold to Poland to circumvent Israel’s refusal to sell advanced arms to Ukraine.

The Israeli firm, according to the newspaper, reported the sale of the anti-drone system to the Israeli Defence Ministry, telling it the buyer was Poland. The firm appeared not to know that Poland was just a mediator and was transferring the system to Ukraine.

The anti-drone system, which can intercept and disrupt unmanned aerial vehicles, is classified by the Israeli Defence Ministry as “advanced defensive technology” and as such can’t be sold to Ukraine.

However, the newspaper said, the Israeli government appeared unwilling to hinder the deal.

Since the start of the Russian war in Ukraine, Israel has refused to sell offensive and advanced defensive systems to Kyiv, fearing this would harm its “sensitive relations” with Moscow.

Israel has deployed the anti-drone system along the borders with Lebanon and around the Gaza Strip in order to undermine any potential drone attacks carried out by the Lebanese Hezbollah or the Palestinian resistance in Gaza.

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“It’s a significant sum of 6.2 trillion” zlotys, Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the ruling Law and Justice party, told a conference.

He added the process of Poland’s getting the reparations would be “long and difficult”.

The sum was announced at the release of a report on the cost of years of Nazi German occupation. Some 30 historians, economists and other experts have been working on the document since 2017.

The country’s right-wing government says Poland has not been compensated by Germany while Berlin argues compensation was paid to East Bloc nations in the years after the war.

Nazi German occupation of Poland began 83 years ago and lasted until the end of the war in May 1945.

President Andrzej Duda said the war was “one of the most terrible tragedies in our history” at a remembrance event near Gdansk.

“Not only because it took our freedom, not only because it took our state from us, but also because this war meant millions of victims among Poland’s citizens and irreparable losses to our homeland and our nation,” Duda said.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki tweeted that the war losses report was “not only a settling of the past, but above all compensation for crippling Poland’s future.”

Dietmar Nietan, the German government’s official for German-Polish cooperation, said in a statement that 1 September “remains a day of guilt and shame for Germany that reminds us time and again not to forget the crimes carried out by Germany” that are the “darkest chapter in our history” and still affect bilateral relations.

Reconciliation offered by people in Poland is “the basis on which we can look toward the future together in a united Europe,” Nietan said.

The German government said on Thursday in a statement to AFP that the matter was closed.

Poland’s government rejects a 1953 declaration by the country’s then-communist leaders, under pressure from the Soviet Union, agreeing not to make any further claims on Germany.

An opposition lawmaker, Grzegorz Schetyna, said the report is just a “game in the internal politics” and insists Poland needs to build good relations with Berlin.

Some six million of Poland’s citizens, including three million Jews, were killed in the war and its industry, infrastructure and culture suffered huge losses.

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Iran and Poland signed a document on cultural, sports, scientific, youth and media collaborations.

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On Monday, Morawiecki ridiculed the French leader’s several hours of phone calls with the Russian leader, saying that they achieved nothing.

“President Macron, how many times have you negotiated with Putin? What have you achieved?” the Polish premier said earlier this week. “Would you negotiate with Hitler, with Stalin, with Pol Pot?”

“These remarks are both unfounded and scandalous, but they do not surprise me,” the French president said on Wednesday.

Macron told TF1 broadcaster’s evening news that he takes full responsibility for speaking to Putin “in the name of France to avoid the war and to build a new architecture for peace in Europe several years ago”.

According to the Elysée Palace, the French president has spoken to Putin at least 16 times since the start of the year. In February, before the war started, Macron visited Moscow to meet his Russian counterpart in a failed attempt to dissuade Putin from invading Ukraine.

Macron, who is standing for re-election in France in polls that begin on Sunday, said Morawiecki was backed by “a far-right party” and accused him of interference in the French political campaign.

The Polish leader, he said, had received his rival Marine Le Pen “several times” and “supports” the French far-right candidate in the election.

There’ve been concerns that the comments by Morawiecki, who also accused certain European leaders of “procrastination” and “wooden language”, might destabilize EU unity as Europe tries to stand up to Putin’s aggression in Ukraine.

Latest opinion polls suggest the gap has closed between the “Rassemblement National” (“National Rally”) leader and the current French president, who leads by only a handful of percentage points just days before the first round of voting.

Le Pen told French television on Wednesday that the French ambassador to Russia should be recalled as a sign of firmness towards Moscow, under scrutiny amid growing evidence of massacres committed by Russian soldiers against Ukrainian civilians.

She has been accused of taking a pro-Putin stance before the war. Le Pen made a high-profile visit to meet the Russian leader in Moscow in 2017 and her party continues to reimburse a €9 million loan to a Russian creditor.

Macron has been portraying himself up as a bulwark against the far right, and more particularly Marine Le Pen. But the far-right leader has made headway by campaigning in particular on spending power, which French voters have told pollsters is their priority issue in the election.

The “narrowing in the polls is worrying,” a close friend of the president was quoted by AFP as saying. “We have closed our eyes too much to Marine Le Pen. Is it too late? Maybe, but I don’t think so.”

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Hundreds of Ukrainians, almost entirely women, children and the elderly, stood in the line for the Kyiv-bound night train in Przemyśl, the main refugee hub in south-eastern Poland, on Monday night.

Among them was Natalia, 46, wrapped in a thick coat and scarf, waiting in line for the first leg of her trip to Zaporizhzhia after leaving her 16-year-old son in the Polish city of Katowice.

“The main thing was to get my child out,” she told Euronews. “I managed to remove my son from a hotspot. I brought him, I left him to live here until the war ends and I’m returning to my husband and my mother.”

Zaporizhzhia, a city in south-eastern Ukraine, has been subject to ongoing attacks and indiscriminate shelling by Russian forces since the beginning of the invasion.

It is also home to the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, whose shelling in early March and the eruption of a fire sparked concerns that a potential breach of its reactors and the resulting meltdown could cause a massive disaster — the first of its kind since the 1986 calamity at Chernobyl.

More than 3.9 million Ukrainians fled their country since Russia attacked more than a month ago, the majority heading for Poland.

But for Natalia, a recent lull in fighting opened up the possibility of return, as the alternative of staying abroad became increasingly untenable. She said many of her compatriots feel the same thing.

“Many are returning because they couldn’t find accommodation, they couldn’t find work — there wasn’t a possibility to live here. We’re not rich, and we weren’t aiming to come here for a holiday.”

“At home at least we can live off of our own resources. Home is home,” Natalia emphasized.

People queue for a train to Kyiv from Przemyśl on 29 March 
2022Credit: Aleksandar Brezar

Concern for family members outweighs the fear of war

Others at the station said that one of the reasons for their return home was also a mixture of concern for family members and a lack of security in their places of refuge.

Yuri, a 71-year-old law professor, said he was returning to Kyiv because of his elderly mother who was on her own in the capital.

“It’s a problem I need to solve. But I also have my friends there, my books, my computer. I feel more settled there.”

But not everyone is returning permanently. Some are only on their way to get others — be it family members or pets — so that they can take them to safety.

Marina, 34, was going to Lviv to meet with her parents to get her 13-year-old daughter and bring her to the Netherlands.

She waited with hundreds of others on Tuesday night as the rain started to drizzle amid information from volunteers that the Kyiv train was delayed by almost three hours.

Ukrainian children are brought onto an ambulance vehicle after arriving in 
Przemyśl on a train from Kyiv on 29 March 2022Aleksandar Brezar

Those gathered on the platform patiently waited as more than a dozen children were carried out on stretchers and taken away by ambulance vehicles.

“I’m a little scared, but I saw that a lot of people are coming back in general and I was happy to see that people are not afraid. People are going to places that are even less safe than Lviv or Poltava. And that gave me courage,” she told Euronews.

‘The waves are meeting in the middle’

Maciek from Szczecin has been volunteering for JDC, a leading Jewish relief organization, since the beginning of the war.

He took a break for several days before returning to Przemyśl on Sunday, and he said he was surprised that the number of people coming in from Ukraine significantly subsided.

At the same time, the number of people returning to their homes has increased to the point where he and other volunteers believe that almost as many people are now returning as escaping the war — at least when it comes to those traveling through the Przemyśl train station.

“Two weeks ago when I was here, it was a big mess. But now the wave is a lot smaller, and you can especially notice that a lot of people are going back. A lot of them are making this decision.”

“So the waves are evening out and meeting in the middle. I feel a lot fewer people are escaping,” he told Euronews.

Polish Border Police stated that according to its data, some 21,000 Ukrainians entered the country, while about 12,000 left on Monday. A total of 364,000 people have returned to Ukraine since 24 February.

People wait in line for the Kyiv-bound trip in Przemyśl on 28 March 
2022 Aleksandar Brezar

Poland has been the largest single destination for refugees fleeing Ukraine, with about 2.3 million people thought to be hosted there, according to UN figures.

And for some Ukrainians, life in Poland has proven to be challenging, and their situation became desperate due to a lack of resources, Maciek said.

Many refugees in Poland had to rely on the kindness of the ordinary people, as countries across Europe struggled with a unified, planned approach to everything from documenting those seeking help to providing them with basic sustenance fees — a bit of money that would cover for their basic expenses.

The job market and higher education remain difficult to access for many.

Earlier in March, UN officials warned that up to 90% of Ukrainians were facing poverty and extreme economic vulnerability, setting the country back decades, and leaving deep economic scars. Refugees are particularly at this risk.

A number of humanitarian and human rights organizations have also raised concerns over the safety of those coming in from Ukraine, including possible human trafficking violations.

But the biggest problem is the lack of capacity, with some of those returning saying that they have spent weeks on end sleeping in sports halls and gymnasiums in remote parts of the country, unsure whether they will be able to find a better arrangement for them and their family members if they waited a little longer.

People disembark a train in Przemyśl on 29 March 2022Aleksandar Brezar

“People are going back because of the reality here. We are full. I’m from northwestern Poland, near the border with Germany. And even there, there are a lot of refugees in need of help,” Maciek said.

“If you can say to the world, everything that is good here is mostly because of the people in Poland. Not the government,” he concluded.

But according to UNHCR spokesperson Rafał Kostrzyński, the Polish government was doing an extraordinary job.

“The government is doing remarkably well, considering the high number of arrivals,” he told Euronews.

“They kept the borders open, which is a very welcome approach. They opened the borders not only to Ukrainian refugees, but also third-country nationals, which is also commendable.”

“Problems exist — there are gaps, there are risks, and so on — but given the whole context, and taking into account the very complex situation, the fate of the refugees here in Poland is not that bad,” Kostrzyński said.

“They do receive assistance — not always to the extent they would like to, but they do receive help.”

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The fence will be five and a half meters high, measure 186 kilometers and cost €350 million to build, the Polish Border Guard agency has announced. Poland and Belarus share a 418 km border.

A border guard spokeswoman, Captain Krystyna Jakimik-Jarosz, declined to specify the location of the construction sites, arguing that “the Belarusian services are just waiting for this to send groups of migrants there, so for security reasons we don’t indicate the precise locations.”

The new fence will be equipped with cameras and motion detectors, among other things, to help border guards prevent smuggling, Jakimik-Jarosz said.

“The temporary fence (made of barbed wire) has already helped us a lot because it gave us time to prepare while a group of migrants was about to attack, to open a passage, time to mobilize enough means and personnel to prevent it,” she explained.

The construction is expected to be completed in June.

The project has raised concerns among human rights and environmental activists. The former fear that migrants fleeing conflict situations will not be able to apply for asylum, and the latter fear the adverse effects on the wildlife of the forest area on the border.

“We will do everything to ensure that the damage to the environment and animals is reduced as much as possible,” Jakimik-Jarosz said.

The European Union has accused Belarus of facilitating illegal immigration into the bloc in retaliation of sanctions imposed against the regime over the August 2020 presidential election, deemed fraudulent by the West, subsequent crackdown on peaceful pro-democracy protests and the hijacking of a commercial plane to arrest a prominent opposition journalist.

Minsk rejects the accusation.

Thousands of migrants, mostly from the Middle East, including Iraqi Kurdistan, Syria and Lebanon, but also from Afghanistan, tried to cross the Polish border into the EU last year. Some of them managed to cross and most of them continued their journey to Western Europe.

The EU’s border agency, Frontex detected nearly 8,000 illegal entries into member states bordering Belarus — Poland, Lithuania, Latvia — in 2021, an increase of 1,069% on the previous year.

Warsaw and Minsk have both been harshly criticized for their treatment of migrants and accused of carrying out illegal pushbacks, leaving large groups of migrants stuck at the border in perilous conditions with little access to food or equipment to ward off freezing temperatures. About a dozen migrants have now died at the border.

Poland imposed a state of emergency at its border, restricting access to the area to journalists and NGOs, weakening oversight of the unfolding crisis.

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Polish Border Guard spokeswoman Anna Michalska said on Friday that a group of 500 people had tried to enter the European Union member state on Thursday evening, aided by Belarusian authorities who had earlier cleared the main camps at the border.

“[The Belarusians] were bringing more migrants to the place where there was a forced attempt to cross,” Michalska said.

“At the start, there were 100 people, but then the Belarusian side brought more people in trucks. Then there were 500 people.”

Michalska told the AFP news agency that Poland detained 45 people, claiming that members of the group had thrown rocks and hurled tear gas shells at Polish officials while Belarusian security forces used lasers to blind them.

Al Jazeera, like all other media, is unable to independently verify claims about activity on the border as Poland has banned reporters from accessing the 3km (2 miles)-wide zone.

The latest crossings and detentions came after Belarus moved people along the border to a nearby reception center and followed the first Iraqi repatriation flight which returned hundreds to Erbil and Baghdad. These developments had appeared to signal a change of tack by Minsk that could help calm a crisis that has spiraled in recent weeks into a serious East-West confrontation.

Poland and its allies accuse Belarus of deliberately enticing thousands of migrants and refugees, many of whom are from the Middle East, and funneling them to the country’s frontier with Poland in response to Western sanctions against President Alexander Lukashenko’s government.

Minsk, backed by Russia, denies that and has accused Polish security forces of carrying out crimes against humanity while repelling people trying to enter the EU.

‘Pawns in a political game’

Aid groups say at least 11 asylum seekers and refugees have died on both sides of the border since the crisis began earlier this year – although the real number is believed to be higher – as concerns grow for people’s wellbeing as freezing winter conditions set in.

But in recent days, a flurry of diplomatic activity seemingly aimed to improve the situation.

This week, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke by telephone twice to Lukashenko, normally shunned by European leaders.

On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Lukashenko held another phone call about the crisis and stressed the importance of cooperation between Minsk and the EU,  the Kremlin said.

Those efforts are yet to achieve a resolution, however.

On Thursday, the European Commission and Germany rejected a proposal by Minsk, under which the EU would take in 2,000 migrants and refugees now in Belarus, and 5,000 others would be sent back to their home countries.

Al Jazeera’s Assed Baig, reporting from the Polish border town Hajnowka, said those still stranded in Belarus, many of whom appear reluctant to turn back, were “just pawns … in a much larger political game taking place”.

Since the beginning of the year, Poland’s border guard service says it has recorded more than 34,000 attempted crossings from Belarus, including more than 6,000 so far in November, nearly 17,300 in October, close to 7,700 in September and more than 3,500 in August, when the crisis started.

While there has been a decline over the last month, Michalska told AFP the “latest attempts have become more aggressive”.

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The Commission considers Poland has failed to abide by the Court’s interim measures issued on 14 July, which relate to a controversial chamber of the Polish Supreme Court that was established to discipline judges and prosecutors.

Brussels sees the disciplinary chamber as a threat to the country’s judicial independence that makes judges subject to political control.

The Polish government insists it’s an essential tool to eliminate the remains of the communist regime.

The EU’s top court issued the July injunction in an attempt to suspend both the chamber and the effects of the decisions it had already taken on the lifting of judicial immunity.

However, the Polish constitutional tribunal rejected the ruling, arguing it was inconsistent with the Polish condition and therefore non-binding. The move was seen as shocking and extraordinary: the primacy of European law is one of the EU’s fundamental principles. Some experts raised the possibility of a “legal Polexit”.

In response to this act of defiance, the European Commission sent an ultimatum and gave Poland until 16 August to abide by the Luxembourg ruling and suspend the disciplinary chamber. Otherwise, the executive would request daily penalties – the final and most forceful step of an infringement procedure.

Even though the Polish government sent a reply on 16 August and promised to dismantle the chamber, the Commission is not satisfied and believes the country “has not taken all the measures necessary to fully comply” with the order.

The disciplinary chamber continues functioning today, the executive noted.

For this reason, the Commission has asked the EU’s Court of Justice to impose financial penalties on Poland until the interim measures issued in July are applied. The Commission didn’t provide the Court with a proposed amount for the daily fines. A spokesperson said on Tuesday the matter will be for the Luxembourg judges to decide.

Separately, the executive launched a new infringement procedure against Poland in relation to another ruling by the EU’s Court of Justice that said the legislation underpinning the disciplinary chamber was in breach of EU law. Polish authorities, Brussels said, have also failed to apply this judgment.

“Justice systems across the European Union must be independent and fair. The rights of EU citizens must be guaranteed in the same way, wherever they live in the European Union,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement.

The Commission hopes the financial threat will force the hand of the Polish government and finally amend the disciplinary chamber, a subject that has put Brussels and Warsaw on a collision course.

Polish Deputy Justice Minister Sebastian Kaleta has described Brussels’ move to request daily fines as “aggression”.

“The European Commission is illegally blocking funds in Poland and is calling for sanctions. These are acts of aggression,” he said in a tweet, adding that these attacks were “illegal”.

The latest escalation comes as the Commission continues its internal review of the Polish recovery and resilience plan. Although the €36-billion plan was submitted back in May, the Commission continues to postpone the publication of its assessment, which needs to be sent to the EU Council for approval.

At the same time, the European Parliament is pressing the Commission to apply a new mechanism to freeze EU funds for countries that don’t respect the rule of law and fundamental rights. MEPs have singled out Poland as a case that merits the system’s immediate application.

In a matter of weeks, Brussels has seen the three issues – the infringement procedure, the recovery fund and the conditionality mechanism – converge into a decisive test for the European Commission to prove its value as guardian of the EU treaties.

“It’s very important to put real pressure with a real financial sanction to be sure that we have a real positive evolution in Poland,” Didier Reynders, European Commissioner for justice, told reporters on Tuesday afternoon.

“There is a link between the [national recovery] plans and the country-specific recommendations in the European Semester. And if you look to the country-specific recommendations, you will see that [for] Poland, we have put some remarks on the dependence of the justice system,” he said, adding that the Commission would be able to add “conditions” in the adoption of the recovery plans.

Asked about the potential amount of the financial penalties, Reynders didn’t specify a number but referred to a previous case where the Luxembourg court ordered Poland to pay €100,000 per day for defying a ban against logging in an EU-protected forest.

The Commission is also considering blocking cohesion funds destined to Poland over the so-called LGBT-free zones that some municipalities and regions have put in place. The executive considers these areas to discriminate against EU citizens on the grounds of sexual orientation. Brussels opened an infringement procedure in mid-July deploring Poland’s lack of cooperation.

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In March the Czech Republic filed for an injunction, saying the Turow open-cast lignite mine drains groundwater away from surrounding areas and is harming Czech citizens.

The court’s ruling on Friday is a temporary measure pending its final decision on the complaint.

Poland is still heavily reliant on coal, which accounts for 48 percent of Poland’s energy production compared with less than 17 percent from lignite.

State-run energy company PGE Group contested the claim, arguing it would take years to phase out black coal in line with EU climate policies.

Poland’s climate minister Michal Kurtyka recently extended the mine’s license until 2044. The country’s new energy plan says the last black coal mine will be closed no later than 2049, but critics have called for it to end much sooner.

Planning to stick to coal mining beyond 2030 will mean the Polish region around Turow will miss out on a share of the EU’s €17.5 billion “Just Transition” fund, which supports localities turning away from producing coal.

The court ruled that the previous 2026 license for Turow had infringed EU laws because it was granted without an environmental assessment.

Court vice president Rosario Silva de Lapuerta found that due to its “negative effects” the Turow mine must “immediately cease lignite extraction activities.”

The halt was welcomed by environmental campaigners. Kathrin Gutmann, campaign director for the Europe Beyond Coal group, said: “This ruling is a welcome reprieve for people living on the front line of this crisis, who have been forced to live with the mine gulping their drinking water and undercutting their houses.”

“The message for polluters like PGE is clear: The rules are the same for everyone, and they are there to protect everyone.”

In January, the German city of Zittau, just across the border from Turow, also took Poland to the same court on the same grounds. The Czech government filed the claim after talks with Warsaw was inconclusive.

After the ruling was issued, PGE posted on Twitter to criticise the court’s decision, saying it was putting Poland on a path toward a “wild” path to energy transformation.

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The Slovenian interior ministry said on Friday that five officers from Estonia, six from Lithuania and 10 from Poland will join its own border troops.

Joint patrols are expected to start next week. The move comes as part of efforts by Slovenia’s right-wing Prime Minister Janez Jansa to tighten border control

Thousands of people trying to reach the European Union have ended up stranded in Balkan countries such as Serbia or Bosnia. They pass through Croatia and Slovenia before moving on to western Europe.

Slovenia is poised to set up an additional 60 kilometers of barbed wire and video surveillance along its Croatian border.

In the first two months of 2021, Slovenian police processed 630 cases of illegal border crossings, down from 1,171 in the same period in 2020 and a continuation of an overall downward trend in migration to Europe.

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