Poland To Move More Military Forces To Ukraine Border: Move Follows Visit Of NATO Chief

Not to be taken by surprise, at a time there is lot of hostile posturing by Russia in Ukraine, Poland has announced that it is going to reshuffle its troops and reinforce more troops at the eastern border near Ukraine, in what is being called as a "historic realignment" of its military structure, departing from its configuration from the Cold War days.

Poland's defense minister Tomasz Siemoniak told the Associated Press on Monday that more Polish troops are deemed necessary in the east because of the conflict in neighboring Ukraine. Currently, bulk of Poland's 120,000-member army is stationed at the western border. It has been a convention ever since it was a Soviet camper, reports Press Herald.

Change In Scenario

Explaining the rationale of the decision, the defence minister said the geopolitical situation in the region has changed a lot and the biggest crisis of security since the Cold War is engulfing it. "So there is a need to draw conclusions from that," Siemoniak added. As part of the new reinforcements, Poland will boost capacity enhancements in at least three military bases in the east and raise deployment levels from the current 30 percent of capacity to almost 90 percent by 2017, with more military hardware moved to those bases. In the east, there are defense units like Siedlce with 30 percent capacity utilisation and meant for optimised of capacity of 100 percent only during a war.

Describing the move as a strategic one and not something "nervous or radical ", the Polish minister said "in a situation of threat we want our units in the east of Poland to be more efficient." Though Poland joined NATO in 1999, its 120,000-member army had been in deployment along the western border, something like a relic of its past role as a Soviet Bloc member.

Biggest Security Crisis

Russian news agency RT in its report noted that the restructuring of Poland's military is part of Warsaw's desire to modernise its army, particularly in the eastern side of the country. In April this year, Poland had asked for NATO's help to permanently station 10,000 troops near its eastern border amid fears that Russia had amassed troops at the Ukrainian border. But NATO did not oblige to Poland's request.

Recently, the new NATO chief, Jens Stoltenberg, visited Poland with renewed calls for a rapid reaction force of at least 4,000 soldiers as planned by the 28 NATO member states at its Wales conference in September. NATO hopes that such a rapid military force will substitute for permanent NATO bases in Eastern Europe, which the military alliance is not obliged to create after the Soviet Union collapsed.

Russia is strongly opposed to the creation of a rapid force and has accused NATO of using the Ukrainian crisis as an alibi to push its military agenda around Russia's borders. Aleksandr Grushko, Russia's envoy to NATO described the move as "Cold War thinking," and a violation of the landmark 1997 treaty in which Moscow and Brussels officially proclaimed that they are not "adversaries."