2023-10-20 21:58 update: 2023-10-22, 10:48
Photo PAP/Artur Reszko
Poland’s population is not big enough to sustain the 300,000-strong army the government wants to create, a former defence minister has said.
The incumbent Law and Justice (PiS) government has made the creation an army of 300,000 a central point of its defence policy, arguing that Poland, with war raging next door in Ukraine, needs a strong army.
This would result in Poland having one of the largest armies in Europe despite the country having a population of 38 million.
With the possibility of PiS’s time in office coming to an end following Sunday’s general election, in which it failed to secure a majority, Tomasz Siemoniak, the defence minister in the 2011-2015 Civic Platform (PO) government, questioned its army expansion plans.
"There is no demographic potential for such an army," Siemoniak told the radio station RMF FM on Friday.
"For now... we have record-high numbers quitting, and this is patched up by hasty hirings and the recruitment of civilian workers into the army," he added.
According Semionak, PiS’s plan to expand the army was characterised by "propaganda slogans" but had "not really been developed."
"I don't know any documents on how to reach 300,000," he said.
In Siemoniak's opinion, "the optimal number" for Poland would be "a 150,000-strong professional army, 30,000-40,000 territorial defence soldiers, 20-30,000 voluntary military service personnel, and a reserve of several hundred thousand soldiers."
"This will give Poland the right forces to defend the state," he argued.
A defence budget that puts defence spending at 3 percent of GDP, Siemoniak added, should be maintained before being increased to 4 percent.
Later on Friday, Mariusz Blaszczak, the current defence minister, took a swipe at Siemoniak's words on X platform.
"Here we go. Currently, the Polish Army has 187,000 soldiers. Tomasz Siemoniak's words mean layoffs in the Polish Armed Forces, the liquidation of units and reduced security of Poland," Blaszczak wrote. (PAP)
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