The Chief of Staff of Poland’s Armed Forces, General Wieslaw Kukula, claimed the country will need to build up a much larger army despite the current demographic challenges, Reuters said.
Addressing the military academy, the Land Forces University in Wroclaw on Friday, Kukula stressed: “Everything is indicating that we are the generation that will stand up in arms to defend our country. And neither I nor any of you intend to lose this war.”
Poland’s demographic crisis will lead to a slowdown in recruitment, which could result in a need for universal military service, which implies mandatory military training and service that is currently not applicable, according to him.
“We will win it, we will come back and we will continue to build Poland, but something has to happen. We have to build armed forces prepared for this type of action. The adversary’s potential is so large that we must build a much larger army, which means that we must also implement the general service model,” he said.
By the end of the year, the Polish army will have more than 207,500 soldiers, placing it as the third largest army in NATO after the United States and Turkey. Earlier, the Chief of General Staff said that Poland should prepare its forces for a full-fledged conflict because of tensions with Russia and Belarus.
