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WARSAW: A large Polish city could have had its water supply cut off on Wednesday as a result of a cyberattack, a deputy prime minister said after the intrusion was foiled.
In an interview with news portal Onet on Thursday, Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski, who is also digital affairs minister, did not specify who was behind the attack or which city was targeted.
Poland has said that its role as a hub for aid to Ukraine makes it a target for Russian cyberattacks and acts of sabotage. Gawkowski has described Poland in the past as the “main target” for Russia among NATO countries.
Gawkowski told Onet that the cyberattack could have meant there would be no water in one of Poland’s big cities.
“At the last moment we managed to see to it that when the attack began, our services had found out about it and we shut everything down. We managed to prevent the attack.”
He said Poland manages to thwart 99 percent of cyberattacks.
Gawkowski last year that Poland would spend over 3 billion zlotys ($800 million) to boost cybersecurity after the state news agency PAP was hit by what authorities said was likely to have been a Russian cyberattack.
The digital affairs ministry did not immediately respond to an email requesting further details.
On Wednesday Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who has warned that Russia is trying to drive a wedge between Warsaw and Kyiv, said that a young Ukrainian man had been detained for acts of sabotage on behalf of foreign intelligence services, including writing graffiti insulting Poles.
PAP reported on Thursday that a 17-year-old Ukrainian man detained, among other things, for desecrating a monument to Poles killed by Ukrainian nationalists in World War Two has been charged with participating in an organized criminal group aimed at committing crimes against Poland.

BRASILIA: Defense lawyers for former president Jair Bolsonaro asked Brazil’s Supreme Court for an acquittal during Wednesday’s closing arguments in a trial in which he is accused of attempting a coup.
Bolsonaro’s lawyers argued in a 197-page document submitted to the court that the far-right former leader is “innocent of all charges” and that an “absolute lack” of evidence was presented during the trial, which began in May.
Bolsonaro and seven collaborators are accused of attempting to hold power despite his 2022 electoral defeat by Brazil’s current leftist leader, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Thousands of Bolsonaro supporters stormed government buildings in Brasilia on January 8, 2023, a week after Lula’s inauguration, alleging election fraud and calling on the military to intervene.
Bolsonaro, who led the Latin American country from 2019 to 2022, has maintained his innocence for months, calling any coup “abhorrent.”
He faces up to 40 years in prison if found guilty.
Bolsonaro was placed under house arrest in Brasilia this month for violating a ban on using social media to plead his case to the public.
The prosecutor’s office maintains that Bolsonaro led an “armed criminal organization” that orchestrated the coup attempt and was its main beneficiary.
The case file also focuses on meetings where draft decrees were allegedly presented, including those involving the possible imprisonment of officials such as Supreme Court judges.
However, the defense has stressed that “there is no way to convict” Bolsonaro based on the evidence presented in the case file, which they argued adequately demonstrated that he ordered the transition of power to Lula.
His lawyers have questioned the validity of the plea bargain handed to Lt. Col. Mauro Cid, Bolsonaro’s former aide, on whose testimony many of the accusations are based.
Bolsonaro’s legal wranglings are at the center of fizzing diplomatic tensions between Brazil and the United States.
US President Donald Trump has called the trial a “witch hunt” and the US Treasury Department has sanctioned Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is overseeing Bolsonaro’s trial, in response.
Trump has also signed an executive order slapping 50 percent tariffs on many Brazilian imports, citing Bolsonaro’s “politically motivated persecution.”