Resilience, Alliances, Cooperation. Defence24 Days Involving Heads of the Polish Ministry of Defence and National Security Bureau

“Regardless of the times, one needs to be ready to face the toughest challenges. Especially because a full-scale war is happening right next to your border, with the evil empire being reborn, in an attempt to take over the world. This will never happen. Poland is strong, thanks to its internal strength, the strength of its army, citizens, and strength of alliances”, Head of the Polish MoD said.

He stressed the necessity of establishing cooperation between the government, the president, local authorities, the media, and citizens. “We are cooperating with the President, and we will continue doing that, this matter is undisputable”, he declared. “We are not proposing a policy that changes vectors every four years”, he assured.

He declared that “no alternative exists for helping Ukraine today”, but, he added, Poland expects partnership in the economic domain. “We need to overtake the manufacturing capacity of the evil empire”, he said, calling for an increase in western defence manufacturing efforts. He endorsed the decision to appoint an EU defence industry commissioner, with his budget at his disposal.

Head of the National Security Bureau, Jacek Siewiera noted that insufficient industrial capacity became the factor that made it impossible for Europe to deliver a million 155 mm artillery rounds to Ukraine. Siewiera warned that disputes on standardization, and the share of benefits stemming from joint projects could make us “stuck for good”. As he said, the strikes targeting the Ukrainian infrastructure may suggest that Russia intends to launch a major winter offensive. He added that it is still not too late, should the West mobilize itself to continue support for Ukraine.

He asked the Polish authorities to cooperate in the realm of defence industry and security, with the European partners, the US, and “also our ally on the other side of the globe – South Korea”.

He referred to the presidential bill submitted to the parliament on 2nd May, envisaging a change of the Armed Forces command and control system. „I have never met a general who would say that reinstating branch commands is a bad idea”, he said. He noted that the current structure, comprising of General and Operational commands, was being introduced in entirely different circumstances, when „nobody was even thinking of a full-scale war next to our borders”, with the priorities given to expeditionary deployments. He said that it would be an indispensable change to include the Sejm and Senate speakers in the control processes.

The Deputy PM and the Head of the Presidential National Security Bureau expressed their appreciation towards Defence24, not just when it comes to the organization of the conference. The Head of the Polish Ministry of Defence thanked for “what the Defence24.pl news outlet is doing, the biggest news outlet as such in Europe, providing information, diligent know-how, and experience of its experts, to share a narrative on common, complete involvement of the society in the homeland defence efforts”.

“It is the sixth edition of the conference, but, unfortunately, the third one organized during a full-scale war at our borders”, Piotr Małecki, President at Defence24 said. “The European and global security are the key challenges that we are facing today. Europe, USA, NATO, are all getting ready to defend themselves from less and less predictable Russia, and other rogue states trying to destroy the global peace”, he added. He emphasized the fact that the end of the war in Ukraine would not mean that the threat posed by Russia is gone.

“Army alone will not defend Poland or Europe. We must create resilience. Deterrence through resilience needs to become our strength. Not everybody would be serving in the military, but everybody should serve the homeland” he said. He called for reinforcement of the relationship with the US, European states, and South Korea, apart from nurturing the EU and NATO membership, also pointing out that the Republic of Korea has become one of the key modernization partners for the Polish Armed Forces.