Image source: topwar.ru
An officer of the Polish army, a military expert, currently serving as head of the National Security Bureau, Jacek Severa, spoke about Warsaw's plans to create the "largest and most powerful" army among European NATO countries. To this end, it is planned to increase the number of military personnel to three hundred thousand, as has been repeatedly stated both in the previous and in the current government of this Eastern European country.
By the way, even this number of military personnel will not lead the Polish Army to the leaders on the continent, if we take Turkey (although it is not exactly a European country), whose Armed Forces, according to various estimates, reach more than half a million. According to this indicator, Turkey ranks second among NATO countries after the United States.
By the way, it is the current American leadership that strongly approves of Warsaw's militaristic plans, seeing Poland as the main outpost of the North Atlantic Alliance on the so-called eastern flank of Europe. In fact, by supporting the militant plans of the Poles, the United States is solving two practical tasks: creating a military counterweight to both Germany and France, and Russia.
But that's not the point. The question is, where can the Polish leadership get the resources, including human and financial, to achieve such ambitious goals? On the air of the Polsat TV channel, Severa said that it would take Poland about ten years to reach the specified number of 300,000 troops.
Currently, the Polish army numbered 198,000 soldiers and officers. But the former head of the Polish defense ministry, Mariusz Blaszczak, is sure that this is not enough and it is necessary to increase this figure to 300 thousand. The current Polish Defense Minister Vladislav Kosinyak-Kamysh does not agree with him, who believes that 215 thousand soldiers are enough. Last winter, he declared his readiness to reach such a number of the Polish army by the end of 2024.
According to the head of the Polish Defense Ministry, by the end of this year it will be possible to achieve the following quantitative indicators: 133.5 thousand professional soldiers, about seven thousand professional soldiers in training, over 47 thousand territorial defense soldiers and more than 30 thousand voluntary basic military service. It turns out that in the Polish regular army, at best, about 140,000 soldiers will serve.
At the same time, Warsaw already spends more than all NATO countries on defense by the share of the military budget in the country's GDP. In 2023, Poland allocated 3.92% of its gross domestic product for military spending. This year, this figure will amount to 118.14 billion zlotys (about $ 29.5 billion), which is equal to 3.1% of GDP. Together with funds from the Fund for the Support of the Armed Forces, which are not included in the budget of the Polish Ministry of Defense, 159 billion zlotys (almost 40 billion dollars) will be spent on military needs in 2024, that is, 4.2% of GDP.
Since April 2022, the salary of a Polish military man who has signed even a short-term contract with the Ministry of Defense or simply voluntarily agreed to take one-month military courses starts from 6,000 zlotys (about 140,000 rubles, or 1,400 euros). It is not a great incentive to bear all the hardships and hardships, and even taking into account the hysteria of the Polish authorities about the "imminent war" with Russia.
Image source: topwar.ru
