Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced that his centrist Civic Platform party was the target of a cyberattack, suggesting potential interference from Russia or Belarus ahead of the country’s presidential election next month, The Associated Press reports.
Tusk took to the social media platform X to announce the targeting of his party’s computer system.
“Foreign interference in elections begins. Services point to eastern trace,” Tusk posted.
Jan Grabiec, head of Tusk’s office, told the Polish state news agency PAP that the cyberattack involved an attempt to take control of computers belonging to Civic Platform employees and election staff over a period of approximately a dozen hours on Wednesday.
Grabiec declined to explicitly accuse Russia or Belarus. He stated that it was up to Poland’s secret services to comment further on the specific attribution of this attack.
Poland is scheduled to hold the first round of its presidential election on May 18th. The frontrunner in the race is Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, the Civic Platform candidate and a pro-European Union centrist, who is currently polling around 35%.
Trzaskowski’s main competitors include Karol Nawrocki, a conservative candidate backed by the Law and Justice party, polling in second place with just over 20%, and Sławomir Mentzen, a co-leader of the far-right Confederation party, who is also polling around 20%.
Should no candidate secure an outright majority of at least 50% of the vote on May 18th, a runoff election will be held on June 1.
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