Democracy Digest: Hungary’s Incoming PM Paves Way for Unfreezing of EU funds

Shortly before 1:00pm on Tuesday, at the closed Bialowieza–Piererow border crossing, Andrzej Poczobut returned to Poland as part of the first exchange of prisoners and spies on Polish territory since World War II. He was one of five people released by Belarus, alongside two Polish citizens and two officers of the Moldovan intelligence services. In return, five individuals were transferred to Belarus. At the border, the released prisoners were greeted by PM Donald Tusk. “Welcome back to your Polish home, my friend,” Tusk later wrote on X. According to Gazeta Wyborcza, where Poczobut worked as a correspondent, negotiations had dragged on for two and a half years but only became effective when the Polish intelligence services coordinated efforts with its counterparts from the US, Romania, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus. Poczobut had been held in a penal colony in Navapolatsk, where he was repeatedly placed in solitary confinement and subjected to psychological torture. “They pushed me to the edge of my physical endurance. They were waiting for me to break. But they failed,” he told Gazeta Wyborcza. In 2025, Poczobut received the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize in absentia, alongside Georgian dissident Mzia Amaglobeli, for “their courageous fight for freedom of speech and the democratic future of Belarus and Georgia”. Following his release, Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said on X she was  “deeply grateful” to everybody who fought hard for his release, and that  Poczobut was “an unbreakable hero… held hostage by the regime in Belarus for simply telling the truth.” The swap took place at a crossing closed since 2021, when the Belarusian authorities began fomenting a humanitarian crisis on the border with Poland and the EU. Among those sent to Belarus was Alexander Butyagin, a Russian archaeologist affiliated with the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, who is believed to be linked to Russian intelligence. Ukraine had sought him for years over alleged illegal excavations in Russian-occupied Crimea. He was detained in Warsaw in December 2025 while returning from the Netherlands. Although a Polish court had approved his extradition to Ukraine, he was ultimately returned to Russia as part of the exchange. The Ukrainian embassy in Poland criticised the move, saying it had learned “with regret” that, despite an earlier and “fully justified” court decision, a Russian citizen suspected of crimes on Ukrainian territory had not been extradited. The embassy warned Russia would cynically use the episode to justify its occupation of Crimea.

Tusk and Ukrainian PM Yulia Svyrydenko used a conference in southern Poland on Monday to signal a step-change in defence cooperation between the two nations with plans for a “Drone Armada” – a project designed to fuse Ukraine’s battlefield-honed expertise with Poland’s industrial and financial capacity. Tusk argued Poland needs such a capability “so that we can not only continue helping Ukraine today, but also say, with full conviction, to the Polish people that we are safe.” Details remain sketchy, but the concept goes well beyond a single procurement program. Rather, it envisions an integrated ecosystem of unmanned systems – from reconnaissance and strike drones to artillery support and electronic warfare – linked through real-time data exchange. Framed as a marriage of “European funding, Polish companies and Ukrainian battlefield know-how”, the initiative is expected to draw on the European Defence Fund. Svyrydenko underscored how central drones are to Ukraine’s war effort: “Destroying tanks, high-value systems and drones is our reality – and we are capable of doing it,” she said, adding that defence innovation is now embedded in Ukraine’s broader reconstruction strategy, alongside EU integration and the rebuilding of human capital. The announcement came during the “Road to URC: Security and Defence Dimension” conference, a prelude to the “2026 Ukraine Recovery Conference” in Gdańsk, which is expected to become the largest international forum dedicated to rebuilding the country. The choice of location in the south was symbolic, as Rzeszow has become a gateway for refugees and a logistical hub for military aid since Russia’s 2022 invasion. Both governments stress a key pillar of the partnership will be technology transfer. In a December interview with BIRN, Polish Deputy Defence Minister Cezary Tomczyk pointed to WB Electronics – a Polish defence firm producing, among other things, drones – as an example of a company already working with Ukraine. But, he suggested, the scale of cooperation will need to grow.