In Afghanistan, the Taliban’s anti-Daesh squad gains a reputation for ruthlessness

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A Pashtun boy warily eyes an Afghan government soldier in Zabul province, southern Afghanistan. The region is at the heart of a bitter fight for supremacy between Taliban and Daesh rivals. (AN Photo/Chris Sands)
Updated 28 June 2018
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In Afghanistan, the Taliban’s anti-Daesh squad gains a reputation for ruthlessness

  • The elusive commando ‘Red Unit’ strikes fear even among its fanatical rivals
  • The insurgent's commandos also target Afghan forces and Nato troops

KABUL: Hunkered down in mountain trenches overlooking a vast area of desert and mud-walled houses in southern Afghanistan, the Daesh fighters opened fire on the approaching Taliban, wounding four and sending the others scrambling for cover.

It was the start of a battle neither group could afford to lose. Whoever triumphed would take a significant step toward controlling the future of one of the world’s most intractable insurgencies.

Daesh wanted to turn Afghanistan into the latest outpost in its self-declared caliphate, while the Taliban feared being overrun by the fanatics who made their name sweeping all before them in Iraq and Syria.

What happened next — in the fall of 2015 — has gone down in radical circles as the moment a new Taliban rapid-response force gained a decisive advantage in the extremists’ bitter civil war.

Now notorious among civilians and fellow militants, the force has gone on to play a key role in the Taliban’s increasingly violent and effective campaign to retake control of Afghanistan. It is the spearhead of what the Afghan government refers to as the “Red Unit” or “Danger Unit” — an elite group of thousands of insurgent commandos equipped with US-made assault rifles, night vision apparatus, heavy machine guns and 82mm rockets.

In contrast to their rival’s growing strength, Daesh has resorted to staging spectacular attacks on soft targets in Kabul, seemingly conceding that it cannot hold swathes of territory against its better organized foe.

“Before the war we were walking around jointly, not bothering each other,” recalled Qazi Halim, a nom de guerre for one of the Taliban’s quick-reaction force commandos. Now “this is the only unit which has defeated Daesh and of which Daesh is afraid,” he said.

Halim, a Pashtun in his late 20s or early 30s, was speaking to Arab News shortly before he was killed in a US airstrike on Tuesday.

A three-day cease-fire between the Taliban and the Afghan government during Eid this month led to joyous scenes across Afghanistan, as insurgents mingled freely with soldiers and government officials. The Taliban said that the brief truce proved the fundamentalist movement was united and that “all combatants strictly follow” orders. This has not always been the case, however.

For months before the 2015 confrontation in Zabul province, a fierce struggle for the right to lead Afghanistan’s insurgency had been unfolding within the Taliban.

The movement was openly divided for the first time in its history as rank-and-file members reeled from the news that its spiritual founder, Mullah Mohammed Omar, had died from natural causes in 2013, only for his closest confidants to cover up his death for more than two years. Daesh hoped to exploit the divisions and become the main insurgent faction in the region.

In response to this unprecedented challenge to its dominance, the Taliban stepped up plans to activate a special forces commando unit tasked with crushing any dissent within the movement’s ranks and wiping out its rivals, Halim told Arab News.

In the summer of 2015, pictures began circulating on social media showing the Red Unit already in training, with recruits dressed in combat fatigues and black balaclavas doing push-ups, firing heavy machine guns and crawling through obstacle courses. But it was not until the Taliban began to fracture after Omar’s confirmed death that the commandos sprang into action.

Arab News has learnt that the Red Unit is divided into several battalion-sized teams of 300 to 350 men, picked according to how they perform at the Taliban’s training camps. Each team is given responsibility for a province. In emergencies, the teams work together to cover a zone consisting of several provinces. As well as fighting rival insurgents, they also fight Afghan government forces and US troops.

One of the first teams was sent to the province of Farah, on the Iranian border in western Afghanistan, where a Taliban splinter group under a dissident commander, Mullah Mohammed Rasool, had formed.

The Red Unit’s commandos swept into the area with devastating effect, killing several of Rasool’s men and forcing him to flee to Pakistan. Mullah Mansour Dadullah, an experienced fighter from a notorious insurgent family, stepped into his place.

Under Dadullah’s leadership, the Taliban splinter group declared its allegiance to Daesh and moved into Zabul, an impoverished region of wadis, deserts and mountains dominated by ethnic Pashtuns. It settled in the district of Khak-e Afghan in the north of the province.

Out of the Afghan government’s reach and initially welcomed by local villagers, the Daesh fighters began to expand their area of operations. They soon targeted Highway One, the main road linking Kabul and the south of Afghanistan.

After a number of pinprick ambushes in which they kidnapped civilians traveling along the highway, they abducted dozens of Hazaras, an ethnic minority of predominantly Shiite Muslims. Those taken hostage included women and children.

The abductions provoked outrage among Afghans in Kabul, who criticized the government for being unable to protect its own people. The Taliban sensed an opportunity. Eager to win more public support for its insurgency and desperate to prevent Daesh from making further inroads into its territory, the movement came up with a plan to hit back.

First the Taliban sent a delegation of muftis — Islamic legal experts — and clerics to Khak-e Afghan. The delegation and a group of Daesh scholars spent a week trying to persuade each other that only their group should be allowed to operate in the country.

When the Taliban muftis ordered their rivals to surrender, the talks broke down. Rather than wait for tensions to cool, the Taliban then sent hundreds of Red Unit commandos to the area in November 2015. They were drawn from the teams for the provinces of Zabul, Ghazni and Maidan Wardak.

Halim, from Maidan Wardak, was among them. The first name of his nom de guerre — Qazi — is an honorific denoting someone trained in Islamic law. In Arabic and Pashto, it means “judge.” The second part of the nom de guerre — Halim — has been changed to protect his identity because he did not have the Taliban’s permission to talk to Arab News.

Arriving in Khak-e Afghan, he found the Daesh fighters were a mixture of Afghans from across the country and militants from Uzbekistan, who had their families with them. Villagers reported seeing them traveling around the area on motorbikes decorated with Dadullah’s name and the slogan “Long live Daesh.”

The Red Unit tried for a final time to convince the Daesh militants to surrender, sending a squad toward their mountain headquarters with an offer of clemency. It was then that the Daesh fighters opened fire, injuring four of the Talibs and triggering the battle that would change the course of the insurgents’ civil war.

A relative of Dadullah’s who tried to evacuate the Daesh leader after the fighting began confirmed to Arab News that the Taliban’s commandos were in Khak-e Afghan at the time. Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said: “They did the fighting and they cleared the area.” He added that their only aim seemed to be “to kill Mansour Dadullah.”

After the advance squad was hit, the Red Unit commandos regrouped and resumed their attack at night, this time breaking through the Daesh lines. They began heading deeper into the mountains, killing dozens of fighters as they progressed.

Over the next few days they searched local houses and found a number of the kidnapped Hazaras tied up and blindfolded. Others lay dead, “slaughtered just hours before,” said Halim.

When he and his fellow commandos captured nine of the Uzbeks alive, they assembled a makeshift Islamic court to put them on trial. After ordering them to confess in front of the hostages to being members of Daesh, they hanged all nine.

The Red Unit commandos eventually tracked down Dadullah by monitoring the military radio traffic of the surviving Daesh fighters. They arrested the leader, took him to an isolated valley and shot him.

By the end of the operation, four members of the Red Unit were dead, but word of the commandos’ strength had spread across Afghanistan, striking fear into Daesh and causing alarm within the Afghan government.

The Taliban leadership was so impressed by its troops’ showing in Zabul that it turned them into a quick-reaction force under the leadership of its most famous commander, a Pashtun named Pir Agha.

Although much of his background remains a mystery, Agha is believed to be in his 40s and from Sangisar in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar. Afghans who have met him describe him as an uncomplicated, but persuasive, public speaker.

One businessman came face to face with Agha about a year before the Red Unit was formed, in a ramshackle bazaar in Helmand province, near Pakistan.

The businessman, who asked to remain anonymous, told Arab News that Agha gave a speech in the border town of Baramcha to a number of local traders who had assembled in a mosque there. In the speech, he denounced Daesh and asked them to donate money to the Taliban.

Agha has since stepped down from his role as head of the quick-reaction force to become the Taliban’s shadow governor for Paktika province. However, his commandos continue to call their force the “Unit of Pir Agha” in homage to his leadership.

They are currently led by Mawlawi Abdullah, a Talib from Maidan Wardak who was the main field commander in the Zabul battle.

Now the pride of the Red Unit, the quick-reaction force has proved to be an elusive and formidable enemy for both Daesh and the Afghan government. Last fall it was deployed to Achin district in Nangarhar province, eastern Afghanistan. Halim claimed a number of the Daesh fighters he encountered there were in their teens.

Then, on April 2 this year, Afghan helicopter gunships attacked a religious ceremony in the northern province of Kunduz, killing at least 36 people, including 30 children, according to a UN investigation.

The government claimed its intended target was the Red Unit. Before his death this week, Halim was unconcerned about being a wanted man. With the cease-fire over and the Taliban again on the offensive, he walked the streets of Kabul in a prayer cap and shalwar kameez — waiting for a mission that would prove to be his last.


Explosions caused 2 bridges in western Russia to collapse, officials say. 7 people were killed

Updated 9 sec ago
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Explosions caused 2 bridges in western Russia to collapse, officials say. 7 people were killed

Explosions caused two bridges to collapse and derailed two trains in western Russia overnight, officials said Sunday, without saying what had caused the blasts. In one of the incidents, seven people were killed and dozens were injured.
The first bridge, in the Bryansk region on the border with Ukraine, collapsed on top of a passenger train on Saturday, causing the casualties. The train’s driver was among those killed, state-run Russian Railways said.

Specialists of emergency services work at the scene, after a road bridge collapsed onto railway tracks derailing an approaching train in the Bryansk region, Russia, on June 1. (Russian Emergencies Ministry/Handout via REUTERS)

Hours later, officials said a second train derailed when the bridge beneath it collapsed in the nearby Kursk region, which also borders Ukraine.
In that collapse, a freight train was thrown off its rails onto the road below as the explosion collapsed the bridge, local acting Gov. Alexander Khinshtein said Sunday. The crash sparked a fire, but there were no casualties, he said.

Russia’s Investigative Committee, the country’s top criminal investigation agency, said in a statement that explosions had caused the two bridges to collapse, but did not give further details. Several hours later, it edited the statement, which was posted on social media, to remove the words “explosions” but did not provide an explanation.

This handout photograph posted on the Telegram account of Kursk region acting governor Alexander Khinshtein on June 1, 2025 shows a damaged freight train at the site of a railway bridge collapse in the Kursk region. (Telegram/@Hinshtein)

The committee said that it would be investigating the incidents as potential acts of terrorism.
Rescue workers cleared debris from both sites, while some of those injured were transported to Moscow for treatment. Photos posted by government agencies in Bryansk appeared to show train carriages ripped apart and lying amid fallen concrete from the collapsed bridge. Other footage on social media was apparently taken from inside vehicles on the road that had managed to avoid driving onto the bridge before it collapsed.

Specialists of emergency services work at the scene, after a road bridge collapsed onto railway tracks derailing an approaching train in the Bryansk region, Russia, on June 1. (Russian Emergencies Ministry/Handout via REUTERS)

Bryansk regional Gov. Alexander Bogomaz announced three days of mourning for the victims, starting Monday.
Damage to railway tracks was also found Sunday by inspectors working on the line elsewhere in the Bryansk region, Moscow Railway said in a statement. It did not say whether the damage was linked to the collapsed bridges.
In the past, some officials have accused pro-Ukrainian saboteurs of attacking Russia’s railway infrastructure. The details surrounding such incidents, however, are limited and cannot be independently verified.
Ukraine’s military intelligence, known by the Ukrainian abbreviation GUR, said Sunday that a Russian military freight train carrying food and fuel had been blown up on its way to Crimea. It did not claim the attack was carried out by GUR or mention the bridge collapses.
The statement said Moscow’s key artery with the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia region and Crimea has been destroyed.
Russia forces have been pushing into the region of Zaporizhzhia in eastern Ukraine since Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Russia took Crimea and annexed it in 2014.
 


6 injured in Colorado attack the FBI is investigating as terrorism

Updated 35 min 56 sec ago
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6 injured in Colorado attack the FBI is investigating as terrorism

  • The suspect, identified by the FBI as 45-year-old Mohamed Sabry Soliman, was taken into custody
  • Suspect yelled 'Free Palestine' as he attacked protesters with a makeshift flamethrower, say police

BOULDER, Colorado: Six people were injured Sunday in a molotov cocktail attack in Boulder, Colorado, and US federal law enforcement said they were investigating it as an act of terrorism.

Mark Michalek, the special agent in charge of the FBI field office in Denver, said a 45-year-old suspect, identified as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, was taken into custody.

The suspect yelled “Free Palestine” as he attacked a crowd with a makeshift flamethrower, the FBI said. No charges were immediately announced but officials said they expect to hold him “fully accountable.”

The attack took place at a popular pedestrian mall in Boulder where demonstrators with a volunteer group called Run For Their Lives had gathered to raise visibility for the hostages who remain in Gaza as a war between Israel and Hamas continues to inflame global tensions and has contributed to a spike in antisemitic violence in the United States.

Video from the scene showed a witness shouting, “He’s right there. He’s throwing Molotov cocktails,” as a police officer with his gun drawn advanced on a bare-chested suspect with containers in each hand.

Injuries ranged from serious to minor. Soliman was also injured and was taken to the hospital to be treated, but authorities didn’t elaborate on the nature of his injuries.

The attack occurred more than a week after the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington by a Chicago man who yelled “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza” as he was being led away by police.

FBI leaders in Washington said they were treating the Boulder attack as an act of terrorism, and the Justice Department — which leads investigations into acts of violence driven by religious, racial or ethnic motivations — decried the attack as a “needless act of violence, which follows recent attacks against Jewish Americans.”
“This act of terror is being investigated as an act of ideologically motivated violence based on the early information, the evidence, and witness accounts. We will speak clearly on these incidents when the facts warrant it,” FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said in a post on X.
Israel’s war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting about 250 others. They are still holding 58 hostages, around a third believed to be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
Israel’s military campaign has killed over 54,000 people in Hamas-run Gaza, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were civilians or combatants. The offensive has destroyed vast areas, displaced around 90 percent of the population and left people almost completely reliant on international aid.
Police in Boulder were more circumspect about a motive. Police Chief Steve Redfearn said it “would be irresponsible for me to speculate” while witnesses were still being interviewed but noted that the group that had gathered in support of the hostages had assembled peacefully and that injuries of the victims — ranging from serious to minor — were consistent with them having been set on fire.
The violence comes four years after a shooting rampage at a grocery store in Boulder, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northwest of Denver, that killed four people. The gunman was sentenced to life in prison for murder after a jury rejected his attempt to avoid prison time by pleading not guilty by reason of insanity.
Multiple blocks of the pedestrian mall area were evacuated by police. The scene shortly after the attack was tense, as law enforcement agents with a police dog walked through the streets looking for threats and instructed the public to stay clear of the pedestrian mall.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said in a statement that he was “closely monitoring” the situation, adding that “hate-filled acts of any kind are unacceptable.”


High energy costs threaten UK manufacturing’s future, industry warns

Updated 02 June 2025
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High energy costs threaten UK manufacturing’s future, industry warns

  • Manufacturing association Make UK said it should cancel climate levies imposed on industrial energy costs and adopt a fixed industrial energy price

MANCHESTER, England: Britain needs to cut industrial energy bills that are the highest among major advanced economies if its aspirations for a healthy manufacturing sector are to succeed, industry body Make UK said on Monday.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government is working on an industrial strategy to put British manufacturing — hit hard by Brexit, soaring energy costs and global trade wars — on a solid footing for the years ahead.
Manufacturing association Make UK said it should cancel climate levies imposed on industrial energy costs and adopt a fixed industrial energy price.
Britain had the highest industrial energy prices out of any International Energy Agency member country in 2023, reflecting its dependence on gas and its role in setting electricity prices.
“If we do not address the issue of high industrial energy costs in the UK as a priority, we risk the security of our country,” Make UK chief executive officer Stephen Phipson said.
“We will fail to attract investment in the manufacturing sector and will rapidly enter a phase of renewed de-industrialization.”
Britain has de-industrialized — defined as the share of manufacturing in overall economic output — faster than in any other major European country over the last 30 years, according to a Reuters analysis of national accounts data.
Manufacturing hit a record low 9 percent of economic output last year, crowded out by the dominant services sector which now drives the majority of the country’s exports — a first among Group of Seven advanced economies.
Alan Johnson, a senior executive for manufacturing, supply chain and purchasing at Nissan Motor, said its Sunderland plant in the north east of England had the highest energy costs out of any of its facilities in the world.
“The proposals being put forward by Make UK ... would send a strong message to investors that the UK remains committed to creating a more competitive environment for electric vehicle manufacturing,” Johnson said.


Ukraine destroys 40 aircraft deep inside Russia ahead of peace talks in Istanbul

Updated 02 June 2025
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Ukraine destroys 40 aircraft deep inside Russia ahead of peace talks in Istanbul

  • Ukraine's President Zelensky says 117 drones were used in the attack on Russian air bases
  • 34 percent of Russia’s fleet of air missile carriers with damages estimated at $7 billion, says Ukraine military

KYIV, Ukraine: A Ukrainian drone attack has destroyed more than 40 Russian planes deep in Russia’s territory, Ukraine’s Security Service said on Sunday, while Moscow pounded Ukraine with missiles and drones just hours before a new round of direct peace talks in Istanbul.
A military official, who spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to disclose operational details, said the far-reaching attack took more than a year and a half to execute and was personally supervised by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Caption

In his evening address, Zelensky said that 117 drones had been used in the operation. He claimed the operation had been headquartered out of an office next to the local FSB headquarters. The FSB is the Russian intelligence and security service.
The military source said it was an “extremely complex” operation, involving the smuggling of first-person view, or FPV, drones to Russia, where they were then placed in mobile wooden houses.
“Later, drones were hidden under the roofs of these houses while already placed on trucks. At the right moment, the roofs of the houses were remotely opened, and the drones flew to hit Russian bombers,” the source said.

Social media footage shared by Russian media appeared to show the drones rising from inside containers while other panels lay discarded on the road. One clip appeared to show men climbing onto a truck in an attempt to halt the drones.
Long-range bombers targeted
The drones hit 41 planes stationed at military airfields on Sunday afternoon, including A-50, Tu-95 and Tu-22M aircraft, the official said. Moscow has previously used Tupolev Tu-95 and Tu-22 long-range bombers to launch missiles at Ukraine, while A-50s are used to coordinate targets and detect air defenses and guided missiles.
The Security Service of Ukraine said that the operation, which it codenamed “Web”, had destroyed 34 percent of Russia’s fleet of air missile carriers with damages estimated at $7 billion. The claim could not be independently verified.

Caption

Russia’s Defense Ministry in a statement confirmed the attacks, which damaged aircraft and sparked fires on air bases in the Irkutsk region, more than 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) from Ukraine, as well as the Murmansk region in the north, it said. Strikes were also repelled in the Amur region in Russia’s Far East and in the western regions of Ivanovo and Ryazan, the ministry said.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was briefed on Ukraine’s attack Russia during a stop at Nellis Air Force Base and was monitoring the situation. A senior defense official said on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters that the US was not given notification before the attack. The official said it represented a level of sophistication the US had not seen before.

Also on Sunday, Russia’s top investigative body said that explosions had caused two bridges to collapse and derailed two trains in western Russia overnight, killing seven in one of the incidents and injuring dozens more. Russian officials, however, did not say what had caused the blasts and the word “explosions” was later removed from an Investigative Committee press release.
 

This video grab from a handout footage released by Russia's emergency ministry on June 1, 2025 shows specialists working at the scene after a road bridge collapsed onto a railway line in the Bryansk region late on May 31, 2025, derailing a passenger train heading to Moscow. (AFP)

Attack ahead of talks
The drone attack came the same day as Zelensky said Ukraine will send a delegation to Istanbul for a new round of direct peace talks with Russia on Monday.
In a statement on Telegram, Zelensky said that Defense Minister Rustem Umerov will lead the Ukrainian delegation. “We are doing everything to protect our independence, our state and our people,” Zelensky said.
Ukrainian officials had previously called on the Kremlin to provide a promised memorandum setting out its position on ending the war before the meeting takes place. Moscow had said it would share its memorandum during the talks.
Russian strike hits an army unit
Russia on Sunday launched the biggest number of drones — 472 — on Ukraine since the full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine’s air force said.

Emergency workers remove debris from a private house that was damaged in a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, June 1, 2025. (REUTERS)

Russian forces also launched seven missiles alongside the barrage of drones, said Yuriy Ignat, head of communications for the air force. Earlier Sunday, Ukraine’s army said at least 12 Ukrainian service members were killed and more than 60 were injured in a Russian missile strike on an army training unit.
Ukrainian army commander Mykhailo Drapatyi later Sunday submitted his resignation following the attack. He was a respected commander whose leadership saw Ukraine regain land on the eastern front for the first time since Kyiv’s 2022 counteroffensive.
The training unit was located to the rear of the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) active front line, where Russian reconnaissance and strike drones are able to strike. Ukraine’s forces lack troops and take extra precautions to avoid mass gatherings as the skies across the front line are saturated with Russian drones looking for targets.
 


Poland on a knife’s edge as exit poll shows a near tie in presidential runoff

Updated 02 June 2025
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Poland on a knife’s edge as exit poll shows a near tie in presidential runoff

  • Runoff pitted Trzaskowski, a liberal pro-EU politician, against Karol Nawrock, a conservative historian backed by the right-wing Law and Justice party and aligned with US conservatives

WARSAW, Poland: Exit polls in Poland’s presidential runoff on Sunday showed the two candidates in a statistical tie with the race still too close to call in the deeply divided nation. The results could set the course for the nation’s political future and its relations with the European Union.
A first exit poll showed liberal Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski with a slight lead over conservative historian Karol Nawrocki, but two hours later an updated “late poll” showed Nawrocki winning 50.7 percent, more than Trzaskowski with 49.3 percent

Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, Civic Coalition presidential candidate, reacts as exit polls are announced on June 1, 2025. (REUTERS)

The polls have a margin of error and it was still not clear who the winner was.
Claims of victory amid uncertainty
Though the final result was still unclear with the two locked in a near dead heat, both men claimed to have won in meetings with their supporters in Warsaw.
“We won,” Trzaskowski told his supporters to chants of “Rafał, Rafał.”
“This is truly a special moment in Poland’s history. I am convinced that it will allow us to move forward and focus on the future,” Trzaskowski said. “I will be your president.”
Nawrocki, speaking to his supporters at a separate event in Warsaw, said he believed he was on track to win. “We will win and save Poland,” he said. “We must win tonight.”

The final results were expected Monday.
A divided country
The decisive presidential runoff pitted Trzaskowski, a liberal pro-EU politician, against Nawrocki, a conservative historian backed by the right-wing Law and Justice party and aligned with US conservatives, including President Donald Trump.
The fact that it was so close underlined how deep the social divisions have become in Poland.
The outcome will determine whether Poland takes a more nationalist path or pivots more decisively toward liberal democratic norms. With conservative President Andrzej Duda completing his second and final term, the new president will have significant influence over whether Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s centrist government can fulfill its agenda, given the presidential power to veto laws.
“We will not allow Donald Tusk’s grip on power to be completed,” Nawrocki said.
The runoff follows a tightly contested first round of voting on May 18, in which Trzaskowski won just over 31 percent and Nawrocki nearly 30 percent, eliminating 11 other candidates.
Katarzyna Malek, a 29-year-old voter in Warsaw, cast her ballot in the first round for a left-wing candidate but went for Trzaskowski on Sunday, viewing him as more competent and more likely to pursue stronger ties with foreign partners and lower social tensions.
“I hope there will be less division, that maybe there will be more dialogue,” she said.
The campaign has highlighted stark ideological divides. Trzaskowski, 53, has promised to restore judicial independence, ease abortion restrictions and promote constructive ties with European partners. Nawrocki, 42, has positioned himself as a defender of traditional Polish values and skeptical of the EU.
Allegations against Nawrocki
Nawrocki’s candidacy has been clouded by allegations of past connections to criminal figures and participation in a violent street battle. He denies the criminal links but acknowledges having taken part in “noble” fights. The revelations have not appeared to dent his support among right-wing voters, many of whom see the allegations as politically motivated.

Conservative historian Karol Nawrocki reacts to the exit polls of the second round of Poland’s presidential election on June 1, 2025. (REUTERS)

“We managed to unite the entire patriotic camp in Poland, the entire camp of people who want a normal Poland, want a Poland without illegal migrants, a safe Poland. We managed to unite all those who want social, community security,” Nawrocki said. It was an apparent reference to those who supported far-right candidates in the first round and who supported him on Sunday.
Some of those voting for Nawrocki in Warsaw dismissed the allegations against him, saying he shouldn’t be punished for his past and that Trzaskowski has also made mistakes as mayor.
Władysława Wąsowska, an 82-year-old former history teacher, recalled instilling patriotism in her students during the communist era, when Poland was under Moscow’s influence.
“I’m a right-wing conservative. I love God, the church and the homeland,” she said, explaining that Nawrocki for her is the only patriotic choice now, and accusing Trzaskowski of serving foreign interests.
“He’s controlled by Germany,” she said. “I want a sovereign, independent, democratic Poland — and a Catholic one.”
International echoes
Amid rising security fears over Russia’s war in neighboring Ukraine, both candidates support aid to Kyiv, though Nawrocki opposes NATO membership for Ukraine, while Trzaskowski supports it in the future.
Nawrocki’s campaign has echoed themes popular on the American right, including an emphasis on traditional values. His supporters feel that Trzaskowski, with his pro-EU views, would hand over control of key Polish affairs to larger European powers like France and Germany.
Many European centrists rooted for Trzaskowski, seeing in him someone who would defend democratic values under pressure from authoritarian forces across the globe.