“We are neighbors with the Russian Federation and its ally Belarus, so we don’t have a buffer between us and them, and we have only a limited time to prepare and respond,” Kukuła said.
Instead of relying on space to hold off the Russians, Poland is planning to more than double its military to half a million troops and to train millions of reservists, Tusk told parliament earlier in March.
“By the end of the year, we want to have a model ready so that every adult male in Poland is trained for war, and so that this reserve is adequate for possible threats,” Tusk said in parliament, adding that women can also sign up.
The training will be voluntary, he said, seeking to offset concerns of a return to the country’s hugely unpopular conscription policy, which ended in 2008.
For Poland, a high-income country with some of the strongest economic growth rates in the EU, the switch to battle-readiness will mark a shift in mindset — and many of its citizens are eager to get started.
“I really want to go through training, and if it comes to it, fueled by hatred for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, I want to defend my home, shoot at them, and make their lives hell,” said Marek, a 37-year-old media producer from Warsaw, granted permission to use a pseudonym to speak candidly.
