Poland’s army chief said on July 10 that his country is preparing for a “full-scale conflict” as the country moves to boost the number of troops along its border with Belarus and Russia.
“Today, we need to prepare our forces for full-scale conflict, not an asymmetric-type conflict,” army Chief of Staff Gen. Wieslaw Kukula said at a news conference. He added that the preparation “forces [Poland] to find a good balance between the border mission and maintaining the intensity of training in the army.”
Speaking at the same event, deputy defense minister Pawel Bejda said that as of August, the number of troops guarding Poland’s eastern border will be increased to 8,000 from the current 6,000, with an additional rearguard of 9,000 able to step up within 48 hours.
In May, Poland, a member of NATO, announced details of “East Shield,” a $2.5 billion program to bolster defense along its border with Belarus and Russia, which it plans to complete by 2028.
“Events in the world are complex, the situation is complex, therefore, having studied new forms and methods of conducting warfare, here we will work out all these moments considering all that is new that has been learnt in the past two years,” Belarusian Maj. Gen. Vadim Denisenko wrote in a statement carried by the ministry’s Telegram channel, according to a translation.
The 11-day drill that began on July 8, called Eagle Assault 2024, also coincides with the NATO summit being held in Washington this week and after Belarus recently joined a regional security group, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is led by Russia and China.
In a July 9 statement, the Chinese Communist Party’s Ministry of Defense said that Belarus held a “grand welcome ceremony” for Chinese soldiers who arrived in the Eastern European country earlier this month. The statement said that the drills will focus on “counter-terrorism operations” and “enhance the coordination capabilities of the participating troops.”
In an unrelated post on social media, the Belarus Defense Ministry said that the size of the NATO forces along the country’s border is growing, writing in a translated statement that the “country is taking all possible measures to prevent escalation. However, if someone crosses our borders, the reaction will be harsh.”
In 2021, Belarus was accused of intentionally flooding Poland’s border with Middle Eastern migrants. The European Union has alleged that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko was attempting to create a border crisis in order to keep Polish soldiers occupied.
Meanwhile, Belarus had allowed Russia to use its territory as one of its launching points for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that began in February 2022.
This year, Warsaw has ramped up defense spending to more than 4 percent of its economic output in response to the conflict next door. The size of the armed forces stood at about 190,000 personnel at the end of last year, including ground, air, naval, special forces, and territorial defense forces. Poland plans to increase that to 300,000 troops within a few years.
“As a defensive alliance, we cannot ignore that threat,” Mr. Stoltenberg said. “Missile defense is an essential element for NATO’s core task of collective defense.”
