National Security Council on strengthening defence
Raising Poland's defence potential in response to changes in regional security caused by, among others, the Ukraine crisis dominated Wednesday's sitting of the National Security Council (RBN), President Bronislaw Komorowski informed after the sitting.
Bronislaw Komorowski said the sitting was devoted to drawing conclusions from the situation and the formulation of "certain solutions in connection with changes in the security environment of Poland and the entire eastern NATO flank, and the military-natured crisis in relations between Russia and Ukraine".
Relating to the sitting, Komorowski informed that Defence Minister Tomasz Siemoniak presented the main points of a planned political-strategic defence directive to supplement a national security strategy passed by the government on Tuesday.
The sitting also discussed the comprehensive strengthening of Poland's defence systems in case of a crisis, including a framework cyber-security doctrine presented by National Security Bureau (BBN) head Stanislaw Koziej.
Koziej said that the most important aspect of Poland's national security strategy, and especially the cyber-security doctrine, was to "create (response - PAP) scenarios that are appropriate to threats". He especially mentioned threats below the war level, like subversion and covert operations, which played a major role in the Ukraine crisis.
Referring to NATO security, Koziej stressed the need for a deterrence formula to discourage potential aggressors from ""invading the Alliance's territory by creeping aggression below the war threshold". In this context he reminded that Poland was especially prone to such attacks as a NATO fringe state.
At the sitting Komorowski handed also RBN nominations to new Interior Minister Teresa Piotrowska, new Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna and Prime Ministerial Chancellery head Jacek Cichocki to RBN.
Accusations that Poland abandoned Ukraine to Russia are nonsensical, said President Bronislaw Komorowski when commenting on charges made by some opposition circles. Support for Ukraine had never been as great as in recent years, he added.
"Never has there been a more intensive effort to improve Ukraine's chances in its striving to join the Western world than in recent years, including the years when Mr Radoslaw Sikorski was the foreign minister of Poland," said the president at a press conference after the National Security Council meeting.
Ukraine was a mighty state and nation whom "no one is going to carry on his back," noted Komorowski. "We can help but we cannot do the job instead of Ukrainians themselves," he added.
"It is hard to put any serious and well-documented accusations because never had efforts to support Ukraine's pro-western aspirations gone as far before. The fact that they did not end in a success is due to Ukrainian domestic politics," the president opined.
Source: PAP, president.pl