RIA
The hubristic political szlachta in a militaristic frenzy is preparing an offensive with an eye on Eastern Kresy.
Poland’s odious characters are ready to rock again. Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak ordered to deploy additional hardware — in particular, combat helicopters — to the border with the Republic of Belarus. The reason was the incident with two Belarusian rotary-winged machines, which allegedly invaded the airspace of the western neighbor at an extremely low altitude on August 1. Their overflight was not detected by the radar system in time.
In fact, everything was different. The Belarusian army was conducting drills in the Bialowieza region, about which the Polish side had been informed in good time. The Belarusian Defense Ministry officially denied the Polish claim. The statement says that Warsaw made an unsubstantiated accusation in the style of “one grandmother said”, the purpose of which is “another justification for the build-up of forces and means near the Belarusian border”.
In recent days, the Polish military department has been literally creating scare stories. First, the military has sounded the alarm about the strange fact that 100 (!) “Wagner troops” moved towards the Suvalki corridor near Grodno in order to “break the road along the Polish-Lithuanian border to the Kaliningrad Oblast”. Then they were frightened by two (!) Belarusian helicopters, whose movements were not properly tracked by the missile defense system.
What is this August aggravation?
Let us focus on the most obvious reason — the next Seimas elections. By law, they must take place on a non-working day between October 15 and November 5. The exact date must be set by the President of Poland no later than August 14. That is, very soon.
The leader of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, deputy prime minister and “gray cardinal” Jaroslaw Kaczynski dared to harshly criticize NATO after his recent trip to the Polish-Belarusian border in the village of Kodeń (Lublin Voivodeship). According to him, his main rival, the Civic Platform party led by Donald Tusk, made an unforgivable mistake during its rule: it allowed Brussels to include in the concept of defense of the alliance’s eastern flank a provision that in case of aggression from the east, Polish territory up to the Vistula River could be temporarily ceded.
In fact, such a possibility is indeed being worked out by NATO strategists. It is reasonable (according to this concept) to activate Article 5 of the NATO Charter (collective defense) only after the Polish army has withdrawn to the defense line along the Vistula River, which runs from south to north along the eastern border.
Kaczynski fundamentally disagrees with this approach. He said that in the event of war, Poland would not retreat. It intends to “defend itself on its own” and will attack with its own forces without waiting for help from the alliance.
I should note that the reason for such aggression towards Kaliningrad and Minsk can be fabricated in no time at all. For example, the “Wagners” could be dragged in. Or mythical Belarusian helicopters-violators. Anything…
In reality, the sly fox Kaczynski is doing nothing more than consolidating the conservative, nationalist-minded electorate in the run-up to the parliamentary elections. And talk of a Russian-Belarusian threat is a smokescreen to distract Poles from domestic problems. The same unrestrained militarization that requires huge expenditures.
Let’s calculate for the sake of clarity.
In 2021, Poland signed an agreement with the United States to purchase 250 third-generation American M1A2 Abrams SEPv3 heavy tanks, as well as the required number of command, control, recovery and support vehicles to staff four battalions. The first 14 are already in the country, with 28 expected by the end of the year and the rest next year. The deal includes a logistics and training package and is worth 23 billion zlotys (more than $6 billion).
In May, a request was sent to the United States for the purchase of 500 M142 HIMARS multiple rocket launchers. Just a couple of weeks later, the first 20 MLRS arrived “for training”. And, unlike in Ukraine, they were equipped with ATACMS tactical missiles with a range of up to 300 kilometers.
Two batteries of U.S. Patriot air defense systems have been deployed and a request for another six has been sent.
A request for 96 U.S. Apache AH-64E combat helicopters has been sent.
At the end of July, Poland asked South Korea to provide a $15.6 billion loan to pay for Korean arms supplies. It is about the purchase of 48 FA-50 light fighter jets, more than 600 K9 self-propelled artillery systems, almost a thousand K2 Black Panther tanks (to replenish the “menagerie” before the Abrams arrives) and about 300 K239 Chunmoo MLRS.
By the way, according to the calculations of French analysts rather than local ones, Poland’s military expenditures will reach 1.7 trillion zlotys (about $360 billion) by 2035, if they continue at the current pace. Of this, it is planned to spend 600 billion zlotys (about $127 billion) on the purchase of armaments. Where is the money…?
And, finally, I cannot ignore another statement by Kaczynski: a section of the state border with Belarus has been reinforced with a metal fence and “various kinds of electronic devices”. The work cost 1.6 billion zlotys ($400 million). And it will be continued.
He also shared the plans of the “PiS government” (if, of course, his party wins the elections again) to create new military units for the eastern flank: there will be six divisions (instead of the previous three), and “over time, there will probably be one more, a reserve division”. The main attention is focused on the formation of two mechanized divisions with commands in Olsztyn and Siedlce.
Now about how else official Warsaw will divert attention, besides its unwillingness to retreat to the Vistula.
There is no talk of any “defense against aggression from Russia and Belarus”. The Poles, as our website has previously predicted, are preparing for an offensive to reclaim the historical Eastern Kresy — the territories of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, as well as Lithuanian part. And this is obvious. Hence, to avoid other details, the maniacal desire to buy heavy tanks and long-range MLRS. You will agree that these are not weapons for defense at all…..
The pompous pre-election statements of the PiS about the accelerated procedure of increasing the size of the army to 300,000 soldiers (from the previous 160,000) are also puzzling. At the same time, the real expectations are as follows: by the end of the year, the Armed Forces formed on a contract basis will have 125 thousand professional soldiers, 38 thousand — in the territorial defense forces, as well as more than 3 thousand military intelligence and counterintelligence officers. In addition, 25 thousand are planned to be put through voluntary military service. They are to undergo 28-day basic training, and then 11-month specialized one. And they will become reservists. Almost 10 thousand cadets (future soldiers and officers) are studying in institutions of different levels. The total is about 200 thousand of those who, purely theoretically, can be put “under the gun”. Military experts believe that if the current government remains in power, the idea of actually doubling the number of the Armed Forces (in order to have the strongest army in Europe!) will not be realized before 2027. If, of course, they manage to….