Robert Michniewicz: “Partnerzy. Początek” (Partners: The Beginning, 2023)

The work

According to the publisher’s description, in February 2022, as tension mounts between Russia and Ukraine, Lieutenant Barbara Szymańska of the Foreign Intelligence Agency travels to the Polish–Ukrainian border to receive secret information from an agent placed inside the Russian government. She does not know that the Russian services are preparing a trap meant to provide a pretext for intervention; with the help of an inexperienced colleague she tries to survive and expose a conspiracy reaching the highest levels of the Polish government.¹

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesThe author told Histmag.org (2024) that this was his first published book and – as he believes – perhaps the only Polish spy thriller that begins at the moment of Russia’s aggression. “Dolina szpiegów” (Valley of Spies), written earlier, was published later.²

The real background

On 24 February 2022 the Polish Sejm adopted a statement condemning the Russian Federation’s aggression against Ukraine.³

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesIn intelligence terminology, an agent placed inside a foreign government is an agent in place; the author described the recruitment of such a person as a long process of getting to know the candidate and building contact.²

What is accurate and what is invented

The author graduated from the Intelligence Personnel Training Centre (Ośrodek Kształcenia Kadr Wywiadowczych) in 1984 and served for 23 years, 11 of them abroad; he retired in 2006, so he does not know the events of 2022 from his service.⁴

The date, the border and the Foreign Intelligence Agency itself are real; under the statute, the Agency operates outside the country’s borders. The Russian provocation, the agent and the conspiracy in the Polish government are fiction; we found no source pointing to a real-life model.^1,5