Facing Russia Threat and U.S. Pivot, Poland Prepares for War

EXPERT INTERVIEW — Apart from Ukraine itself, few European nations have been as straight impacted by Russia’s 2022 invasion as Poland. From the start, Poland, which shares a roughly 340-mile-long border with Ukraine, has taken in much more refugees than some other nation; general, almost 9 million Ukrainians have crossed into Poland, and three years into the warfare, roughly a million refugees stay. Extra just lately, Poland has been among the many many European nations buffeted by the U.S. shift to larger engagement with Russia, and its willingness to satisfy with Kremlin officers and undertake language and positions that had been anathema to the Biden Administration and its European allies. 

The sensible implications for Poland have been profound: the federal government has pledged to spice up army spending – although it already spends extra as a share of GDP than any NATO nation (Estonia and the U.S. rank second and third); just lately, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk vowed to double the dimensions of the army, together with reservists; and he and different Polish officers have prompt that the nation think about the positioning of nuclear weapons on Polish soil. Tusk stated final month that the mixture of a rising risk from Russia and “a profound change of American geopolitics” had been forcing Poland’s hand.