Poland nearly 300 thousand army? The Ministry of National Defense discloses data about soldiers in arms

Minister Mariusz Błaszczak shared a graphic showing the size of the Polish Army on the X platform (formerly Twitter). According to the entry on X, the number of soldiers currently in arms is 193,000. professional soldiers, territorial defense and voluntary compulsory military service. The minister further added in the post that “the stories of some politicians that we do not have the demographic potential for a 300,000-strong army are fairy tales.”

At a meeting on November 21 with United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in Wysoka Głogowska, the minister said that “300 thousand “It is possible to build an army, you just have to want it and be able to do it.” Adding further that “our ambition is to build the strongest land army in Europe. This – I sincerely hope – will be the Polish army. We are doing everything to make it happen, to make the Polish Army numerically larger, to ensure that the Polish Army is equipped with modern weapons,” he said. Błaszczak.

Unfortunately, the minister did not provide detailed data on the given number of 193,000. At the beginning of November, the Ministry of National Defense announced that there were already over 186,000 soldiers in arms, compared to the data from 2015, when it was only 95,000. According to official data, the number of Territorial Defense Forces (TDF) is over 38,000 soldiers.

The Ministry also boasted that thanks to the establishment of Central Military Recruitment Centers (CWCR) providing the opportunity to perform voluntary compulsory military service, over the last year and a half it has completed over 42,000 people and some of them already serve in the professional army.

The ministry also boasted that next year’s defense budget will amount to as much as PLN 158 billion, i.e. approx. 4.2%. GDP. For comparison, in 2015 the defense budget was only PLN 38 billion.

Former Minister of National Defense Tomasz Siemoniak in the Civic Platform government, recently asked whether a potential new coalition government of the Civic Coalition, Third Way and the Left would strive to create an army of 300,000. soldiers, replied that “there is no demographic potential for such an army”. Further adding that in his opinion it is the optimal variant 150,000-strong professional army, 30-40,000 territorial defense soldiers, 20-30 thousand voluntary compulsory military service and building a reserve of several hundred thousand people.

Poles do not want compulsory military service

The dangerously changing international environment means that more and more countries, especially in the Central European region, are considering restoring compulsory military service. There are no official declarations or plans in Poland yet about restoring compulsory service, these are just media rumors.

According to a recent survey by the Pollster Research Institute for “Super Express”, only 27 percent Poles believe that compulsory military service should be introduced in our country, and 13 percent indicates that it should apply to both women and men. 44% do not want compulsory service. subjects.

The study shows that among the opponents (44%) of compulsory military service men predominate – 49 percent (against 40 percent of women) do not want this obligation to return, 16 percent of respondents have no opinion.

Compulsory military service in Europe currently takes place in Switzerland, Austria, Greece, Cyprus, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania and Estonia. Latvia recently announced the restoration of compulsory military service.

PM/PAP/MON