/nginx/o/2024/07/02/16195982t1h5b8f.jpg)
In early June, the first military casualty from a NATO country occurred on the Belarusian border. Poland's former defense chief stated to The Baltic Sentinel that their intelligence has consistently known the immigration attack was orchestrated by Russia.
Polish soldier Mateusz Sitek, who succumbed to his wounds after being stabbed on the Polish-Belarusian border on May 28, was honored today with an Abrams tank named "Sitek-21" in the 1st Warsaw Armored Brigade. The ceremony, attended by Sitek's mother and the commander of the 1st tank battalion, unveiled the inscription, according to polsatnews.pl.
According to the portal the border defense unit within the Territorial Defense Forces, where Sitek served, will henceforth bear his name.
/nginx/o/2024/08/01/16259942t1h00ce.jpg)
Retired General Rajmund T. Andrzejczak, former Polish Defense Chief, told The Baltic Sentinel today that Poland is reviving the tradition from the interwar period and World War II of naming their horses and tanks. “Poles are very romantic, so the symbols matter for us,” said General Andrzejczak.
Commenting on the immigration crisis Poland has faced on its eastern border since the summer of 2021, he asserted that Polish intelligence views this as a Russian operation, not just a Belarusian one. “There is no question about it, it was a Russian design,” Andrzejczak said, explaining that Russia motivated various countries to cooperate and facilitated the movement of refugees to Europe. Andrzejczak described the immigration weapon as a “low-cost instrument” for attackers.
/nginx/o/2024/08/01/16259951t1h8e0b.jpg)
August 1, 2024, also marks the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising against the German occupation. There will be a minute of silence in Warsaw to commemorate the event. “Everything stops. No traffic,” Andrzejczak described.
He has recently launched a defense YouTube show called “Ground Zero”. He described his effort to explain the significance of the Warsaw Uprising to young Poles in the latest episode of the show. “I had to explain to today’s youth how we ended up losing 200,000 people in Warsaw,” he said, emphasizing that Poland must do everything to prevent the need for another such uprising in the future. Polish defense expenditure is projected to ascend to 5% of the GDP in the forthcoming year.