2024-08-15 10:35 update: 2024-08-15, 10:38
Photo PAP/Paweł Supernak
Armed Forces Day is being celebrated in Poland on Thursday with a host of ceremonies attended by the country’s top officials.
The August 15 holiday marks Poland’s landmark victory over the Red Army in the 1920 Battle of Warsaw, headed by Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, during the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921.
As part of the observances, President Andrzej Duda laid a wreath at the Monument to Pilsudski on the square near the Belweder Palace in the morning.
The main events will take place at noon on Pilsudskiego Square in central Warsaw where leading figures, including Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz will attended a ceremonial changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, in the presence of the Polish president.
The central celebrations of Armed Forces Day will culminate at 2pm with a massive annual military parade involving over 2,000 soldiers from Poland and other Nato countries , 220 military vehicles and some 80 military aircraft, with Duda, Kosiniak-Kamysz, Prime Minister Donald Tusk and NATO Military Committee Chair Rob Bauer in attendance.
The parade will showcase weaponry including US-made M1A1 Abrams tanks, HIMARS missile launchers, Patriot medium-range air defence system, K9 Thunder self-propelled howitzers from South Korea, Polish-produced 155 mm Krab self-propelled gun-howitzers and Rosomak wheeled armoured personnel carriers . (PAP)
mr/jch
