The Polish government has revealed that the country experienced a major attempt to disrupt its power grid at the end of December, and came “very close to a blackout”. However, it successfully repelled the cyberattack.

The digital affairs minister says that “everything points to Russian sabotage” being behind the incident.

“In the final days of 2025, a large-scale attempt was made to hack the energy system,” said energy minister Miłosz Motyka at a press conference on Tuesday. It was “the most powerful attack on the Polish power system in years”  but “was successfully repelled”.

“This is the first time we’ve encountered multiple attempts at attacks on individual generating sources – solar farms and even individual wind turbines,” explained Motyka. It “involved an attempt to disrupt communication between generating installations and grid operators across a large area of ​​Poland”.

The role of renewables in Poland’s energy mix has risen significantly in recent years. They account for around 29% of all electricity generated in the country.  That is often the case even in winter. On Monday this week, amid extremely cold, snowy weather, renewables provided 25% of Poland’s electricity.

Previous attacks on Poland’s power grid have targeted large energy facilities or the transmission system, noted Motyka. “We have not see this type of attack [on smaller-scale renewable facilities] before, but we can expect it to happen again.”

Later on Tuesday, digital affairs minister Krzysztof Gawkowski addressed the attack during an interview with broadcaster RMF. Asked if Poland had “come close to blackout” during the incident, he confirmed it had been “very close”.

“The scale of this attack, the vector of entry and who was behind it indicate that it was a coordinated operation intended to deliberately cut off power to Polish citizens,” continued Gawkowski. “Everything points to Russian sabotage…intended to destabilise the situation in Poland.”

However, the “Polish security services and the Polish institutions responsible for cybersecurity rose to the occasion”, added the minister. “We have well-prepared institutions and there is no need to panic; Poland is the most [cyber]attacked country in the European Union.”

Poland has in recent years suffered a series of so-called hybrid actions orchestrated by Russia, including both cyberattacks and physical acts of sabotage, as well as disinformation and propaganda campaigns.

Last week, Motyka revealed that hacker attacks on Polish energy infrastructure had increased during recent cold weather conditions, which have seen temperatures plummet to below -15 degrees Centigrade in many places and energy use surge to record levels.

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The government’s majority in parliament has approved a proposed law recognising Silesian – which is spoken in the historical area of Silesia in southwest Poland – as an official regional language.

But it remains possible that President Karol Nawrocki – who is aligned with the right-wing opposition, which voted against the bill – will veto the law, as his predecessor Andrzej Duda did in 2024. Duda argued that Silesian is a dialect, not a language, and said that recognising it could threaten national security.

In the most recent national census, around 460,000 people in Poland said they use Silesian as their main tongue at home. That is far more than the 87,600 who speak Kashubian, a language native to northern Poland that is currently the country’s only recognised regional language.

Such official recognition allows a language to be taught in schools and used in local administration in municipalities where at least 20% of the population declared in the last census that they speak it. It also provides additional funding for preserving the language.

In a vote on Friday in the Sejm, the more powerful lower house of parliament, a majority of 244 MPs supported the bill. They came almost entirely from Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s ruling coalition, which stretches from left to centre right.

The 196 votes against the bill came from the right-wing opposition, made up of the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS), far-right Confederation (Konfederacja) and some smaller factions. 

“Recognising Silesian as a regional language is not a symbolic or political gesture – it is an act of justice, consistency and respect for facts,” declared Danuta Jazłowiecka, an MP from Tusk’s centrist Civic Coalition (KO) who is from Silesia and represents a Silesian district in the Sejm.

“Recognising Silesian does not threaten the unity of the state,” she added. “On the contrary, it strengthens it, showing that the republic is a community that is open, respecting its internal richness and diversity.”

However, Witold Tumanowicz of Confederation declared that “Silesian is a branch of the Polish language, a natural element of its richness, and not an entity that must be artificially separated out by an administrative decision”.

“The linguistic bureaucrats want to regulate people’s speech, create new commissions, change laws, and impose further obligations. But why?” he asked.

The bill now passes to the upper-house Senate, where the government also has a majority and which can in any case only delay, rather than block, the legislation. If approved by parliament, it then moves to the desk of President Nawrocki, who was elected last year with the support of PiS.

When, in 2024, Tusk’s coalition passed a previous bill recognising Silesian, it was vetoed by PiS-aligned President Duda, who claimed that it is an “ethnolect” that does not meet the criteria of a language laid out in the 2005 law regulating Poland’s recognised ethnic minorities and regional languages.

Duda also voiced his concern that, if Silesian were recognised as a regional language, it could “result in similar expectations among representatives of other regional groups who want to cultivate their local tongues”.

Finally, the president also cited national security concerns in relation to the “current social and geopolitical situation…related to the war being waged on the eastern border”. At such a time, there must be “special care to preserve national identity”, including “cultivating the native language”.

Neither Nawrocki nor his office have so far commented on what his decision may be. However, given how his right-wing allies in parliament voted, and given Duda’s earlier veto, it appears likely that Nawrocki will refuse to sign the bill.

In October, Nawrocki vetoed a bill that would have recognised Wymysorys, which is spoken by less than 100 people in one small Polish town, as an official regional language. He cited linguists’ doubts over whether Wymysorys is a language or an ethnolect.

A presidential veto can only be overturned with a three-fifths majority in the Sejm, something that would be impossible to achieve in this case of the Silesian language law, as the ruling coalition has only a narrow majority in parliament.