Most Poles were downright terrified by the release of the July 2011 document “Plan for the Deployment of Armed Forces,” approved by then Minister of National Defense Bogdan Klich, which assumed that the country’s independent defense would last a maximum of two weeks . and after seven days the enemy would reach the right bank of the Vistula.
The PO-PSL government assumed that it would give the Russians without a fight the entire territory of our country up to the Vistula River, and that the line of this river would only be the line of defense, in the hope that Poland would do so in a while. being helped by NATO troops.
I am writing this after some time, because in 2011 there were no so-called NATO contingency plans, which means that we may not have to wait weeks but months for help from this military bloc.
This meant that they wanted to give almost half of Poland into the hands of the Russians, because cities like, to name only the largest: Olsztyn, Białystok, Lublin, Rzeszów, the fate of Bucza and Irpie was being prepared, and Warsaw would be a become a front city, with all the terrible consequences that entails.
They were proud of their savings
The adoption of such a defense plan resulted in the then Defense Ministers being forced to cut back on defense spending, resulting in the liquidation of as many as 629 organizational units of the Polish Armed Forces. A large part of these liquidations concerned units to the east of the Polish armed forces. the Vistula.
Defense ministers Klich, and later Siemoniak, even bragged about these cuts in defense spending, and the latter, in the presence of several generals, spoke with disarming sincerity about cuts in this area “if there are none, there is none”.
This happened in a situation where Russia openly talked about the need to withdraw NATO troops to pre-1999 positions (that is, before the expansion of this Pact to the East), and adopted an imperial policy towards its neighbors implemented (in 2008 it occupied two regions of Georgia, and in 2014 the Ukrainian Crimea and the Donetsk and Luhansk regions).
This happened despite the fact that at a rally in Tbilisi in defense of Georgia, the then president, Lech Kaczyński, publicly denounced Moscow’s strategy, saying: “first Georgia, then Ukraine, then the Baltic states, and perhaps my country Poland.”
As much as PLN 10.6 billion less was spent than planned
In concrete terms, these annual cuts were as follows: in 2008, PLN 2.9 billion less was spent than planned (PLN 22.6 billion planned – PLN 19.7 billion expenditure), in 2009 PLN 1.7 billion less (plan PLN 24.7 billion PLN – 23 billion PLN expenditure). ), in 2010 PLN 0.5 billion less (plan PLN 25.7 billion – PLN 25.2 billion expenditure), in 2011 PLN 0.8 billion less (plan PLN 27.5 billion – expenditure PLN 26.7 billion) , in 2012 PLN 1.4 billion less (PLN 29.5 billion plan – PLN 28.1 billion expenditure) and in 2013 PLN 3.3 billion less (31, PLN 4 billion plan – PLN 28.1 billion expenditure).
In total, during the entire period from 2008 to 2013, PLN 10.6 billion less was actually spent on the military than planned, and the Army Financing Act was violated every year (1.95% of GDP was allocated to defense).
It should be noted that these unspent billions of funds that should be spent on the modernization and armament of the army, because other expenses of the so-called the current maintenance and military pensions (these are paid from the budget of the Ministry of Defense, not from ZUS) have been fully implemented.
Only the PiS government guarantees the defense of every inch of Polish land
It is for these reasons that during the PO-PSL government, on the one hand, organizational units of the army were massively liquidated, and on the other hand, only a small amount was spent on armaments, a spectacular example of which was the purchase of 10,000 tables from Mendeleev.
Now that we spend almost PLN 150 billion per year on the army, almost PLN 100 billion from the budget and another PLN 50 billion from a special fund, and their expenditure is carried out smoothly, the Polish army is successively equipped with modern equipment.
According to foreign analysts, if Poland finances its armament expenditure at this level, within the next two to three years our army will potentially be the second largest land army in Europe in terms of potential.
For Poles who do not want the defense of our country against aggression from the East to take place only on the Vistula, the choice must be clear: only the Government of Law and Justice guarantees the defense of every inch of Polish land.
Source: wPolityce