Poland prepares for Russian invasion and reinforces its army with 15,000 soldiers – Observer

The Polish army will be reinforced with 15,000 new soldiers this year, as part of a plan to expand its military capacity and improve the results obtained in the military simulation against a hypothetical Russian invasion.

Poland’s Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak announced Monday that 8,000 of those 15,000 conscripts are already “working,” having completed 28 days of basic training, and that from Monday another 1,000 young men will begin teaching, at 16 barracks in different parts of the United States. . country.

Includes Polish Army Expansion Program Double the number of troops, increase defense spending to 3% of GDP, and upgrade equipmentPurchase of 250 Abrams tanks and 32 F-35s.

The head of the Polish government party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, said yesterday in Kielce that it is important to make enemies understand that “it is not worth attacking”, stressing that the Polish defense doctrine is “to defend the borders (with Russia)”. “.

For political scientist Karol Kowalski, of the University of Krakow, the military exercises carried out are aimed at assessing whether Poland is “It will be able to withstand an attack for three weeks, until it receives reinforcements from the allies.”.

“The exercises were conducted twice. The first time, following political instructions, they are trying to defend the entire territory from the beginning. It was a disaster. In five days there will be Russian tanks in Warsaw. And the exercises were repeated according to the plans of the army, retreating from the beginning to the region of the Vistula River. In this way, the Polish troops will remain 11 days, Enough to receive help from allies“.

In that simulation, described by Polish President Andrzej Duda as “the largest mobilization since 1989 by the army, it was concluded that in the face of the Russian invasion, the Polish navy and aviation would be practically suppressed in the first five days of fighting, as well as all ground forces east of the River Vistula.

However, according to military information from the Polish media, if a defensive line was chosen from the beginning of the hypothetical conflict along the Vistula River and the Air Force transferred aircraft to German bases to survive the first attacks, It will be possible to contain the advance of the invaders until help is obtained.

At the recent NATO summit, it was announced that the headquarters of the US Army’s Fifth Corps would be established in Poland, a decision Duda described as “very important” and which, in his opinion, “strengthens Polish security.”