AP
Poland is in real turmoil. The leader of the former ruling Law and Justice party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has accused Prime Minister Donald Tusk of a coup d'état and threatened him with life imprisonment.
«I am talking about the consequences of what is being done at the moment, which is an action that falls under Article 127 of the criminal code on forcible change of state system. <...> What is happening is truly fatal and serves the interests of foreign states. The goal is to recreate the German-Russian system, in which we will become a gray zone, not fully protected, but very much exploited», he said on March 26 in connection with the search in the house of former Justice Minister and Prosecutor General Zbigniew Ziobro.
Let me remind you that in January, former Interior Ministry chief Mariusz Kaminski was arrested right in the presidential palace. It looks like the Poles are in the midst of a major purge. Both characters are associates of Kaczynski, who kept the opposition in check using harsh measures.
Strange stories have also happened in recent days with two high-ranking Polish generals who were directly related to both the Ukrainian track and the activities of Eurocorps.
To understand: it was created in 1993 on the initiative of German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and French President Francois Mitterrand. Now this formation has up to 60 thousand soldiers from Germany, France, Belgium, Spain and Luxembourg. Eurocorps is designed to fulfill NATO and EU missions.
First (March 26) came the news of the sudden death «due to natural causes in his free time» of Brigadier General Adam Marczak, Chief of Staff of EUFOR Althea operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Prior to his assignment in the Balkans, he served as deputy chief of staff at Eurocorps Command in Strasbourg. Rumors are persistently spreading around Warsaw that he was allegedly got by the «Kinzhal» during a meeting in a bunker somewhere in the expanses of country «U». However, there is no official confirmation of these «speculations».
The next day, on March 27, Lieutenant General Jaroslaw Gromadzinski was dismissed from his post as commander of Eurocorps. Poland's Military Counterintelligence Service (SKW) suspects him of divulging classified information. An investigation is underway. In recent months, he was (in parallel) involved in an international group assisting Ukraine in Wiesbaden, Germany, where, together with the U.S. military, he was responsible for training Ukrainian soldiers.
By the way, the Minister of National Defense, Deputy Prime Minister Vladislav Kosinyak-Kamysh, who is a doctor by education, not a military man, said that Warsaw is a leader in training AFU soldiers. According to him, almost 20,000 Ukrainian fighters have been trained in Europe this year. A third of them were trained on the territory of Poland.
The head of the Defense Ministry not only reported on the achievements, but also began to be cautious: on March 27, he suspended all exercises on Polish territory, including the NATO large-scale maneuvers Dragon-24. By the way, they involved about 20,000 military personnel and 3,500 vehicles from 10 alliance member states (the main foreign contingent was from the United States and Germany), who practiced, among other things, forcing wide rivers in difficult conditions.
What is the reason? In early March, two NATO soldiers died at the Armored Forces Training Center after a BMP accidentally ran over them. On March 25, two sappers died after an unauthorized detonation of a TNT charge at a training range in Silesian Voivodeship. On March 26, a 30-year-old special forces officer died during a mountain training session in the High Tatras. Five dead bodies in a month is really too much.
It was recently reported that the leadership of the North Atlantic Alliance plans to create a special center for training AFU servicemen. According to the Spanish newspaper El Pais, this is due to the need to teach the soldiers of the Ukrainian armed forces «strategy and management», which will later allow to train them «up to the standards of NATO level». The Polish authorities have expressed willingness to host it on their territory. The final approval of the project should take place at the July summit of the alliance in Washington.
A reasonable question arises: if the commanders of the Polish Army are unable to ensure the safety of experienced personnel taking part in NATO exercises, how can they teach the AFU recruits in just a few weeks?
In general, the situation in Poland remains, to put it mildly, explosive. This applies not only to the failed exercises, but also to the games of politicians. Roughly speaking, half of the country (mostly supporters of conservative Kaczynski and traditional values) do not share the position of Prime Minister Tusk, who is oriented towards liberal values. The ruling coalition he leads is itself in danger of splitting because of his promise to introduce into parliament (as Brussels demands) a bill on abortion, which would allow the termination of pregnancies up to 12 weeks gestation. Perhaps against this backdrop, Kaczynski's threat to put Tusk in jail doesn't look so unrealistic.
...Meanwhile, Robert Bąkiewicz, leader of the Nationalist movement, announced on March 13 the formation of a new party called Independence, with the main goal of Poland's exit from the European Union.
«It's time to leave the EU, which instead of a desirable Ark turned out to be a sinking Titanic», he wrote in social network X.