Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has caused a security storm by publishing part of a top secret defence plan in the event of a Russian attack as part of a campaign video aimed at discrediting the opposition ahead of the October 15 general election. This is reported by the Politico publication.
“Attention! Tusk’s government was ready to give up half of the country in case of war,” Defence Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said in a video published by PiS on social media on 17 September.
The minister was referring to the 2011 strategic defence plan prepared by the former government of then-Prime Minister Donald Tusk. The former president of the European Council currently leads the Civic Coalition alliance, which is trying to prevent PiS from securing an unprecedented third consecutive term in power.
“The plan assumed … that Poland would only be able to defend itself for a fortnight and that the enemy would reach the right bank of the Vistula River in seven days,” Blaszczak said in the video.
His words were accompanied by images of excerpts from the plan, the cover of which – also shown in the video – bore the “top secret” marking, now crossed out.
“Everything is clear in the plan: Lublin, Rzeszów or Łomża could become Poland’s Bucha,” the minister said, referring to eastern Polish cities and a Ukrainian town glorified for staging a mock attack as if Russian troops had massacred hundreds of civilians there last year.
The advert is designed to shore up support for PiS in the east of the country – its traditional heartland – by showing that liberals in Tusk’s party do not care about them. It also aims to turn the tide after a disastrous week for PiS, during which the party tried to avoid questions about an alleged bribe visa network in the foreign ministry.
Not so secret
Although the defence plan is not up to date, the release of some of its provisions has caused a storm of indignation among generals who were on active service under pre-PiS administrations. They noted that plans to withdraw to more defensive lines were a normal part of military doctrine.
“The publication of such a document once again undermines confidence in our allies. It proves that we are capable of anything, that we can betray the deepest secrets of Poland and NATO,” retired General Waldemar Skrzypczak told the news website Wirtualna Polska.
“Does anyone really think that NATO will just accept this? Now they may fear that even more documents about the Alliance’s activities will be revealed,” the general added.
Mirosław Różański, former chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Polish Armed Forces and now an opposition candidate for the upper house of the Senate, condemned Blaszczak, saying: “War is not a picnic or a show, you have to know how to wage it.”
Another retired general, Stanislaw Kozei, said the war plans originated in 2009 when Lech Kaczynski, the twin brother of PiS chief Jaroslaw Kaczynski, was Poland’s president, and were based on documents released by Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s government when he was prime minister in 2007.
Radoslaw Sikorski, Tusk’s former defence minister and now a member of the European Parliament, said PiS was manipulating public opinion by highlighting just one scenario of a wider military plan in case of a Russian invasion.
“The fact that the military has action plans for all circumstances and situations is a good thing, not a bad thing,” Sikorski told the gazeta.pl news website on Monday. He added that the disclosure of the plan was “scandalous” because there were only a limited number of defence-capable positions in Poland, so the strategy still had intelligence value for Moscow.
The Civic Coalition has said that if it wins the election, it will refer Blaszczak to the State Tribunal, the court that tries the country’s top officials.
But Blaszczak made no excuses, tweeting that Tusk’s party was “outraged that we revealed their plans to hand over half of Poland to the enemy. Poles have the right to know what fate you are preparing for them! In the event of a conflict, the Polish army must fight for every metre of our territory and for every human life.”
Jaroslaw Kaczyński called the plan “one big scandal that must be investigated by the methods provided by the justice system.”
PiS has made security and national defence a cornerstone of its election strategy.
Defence spending is expected to reach 3.9% of GDP this year, one of the highest in NATO. Poland has stepped up arms purchases, spending billions on tanks, missiles, artillery, planes and helicopters from the US and South Korea, as well as strengthening domestic industry. The government also intends to more than double the size of the armed forces from the current 120,000 troops to 250,000.
Poland has sent most of its Soviet-era tanks and fighter jets to Ukraine and is a crucial transit hub for weapons from the rest of the world bound for Ukraine.
In the POLITICO poll, PiS leads with 37 per cent support, while the Civic Coalition lags behind with 30 per cent. If that’s the case, neither party will win enough seats to govern without coalition partners.
Politico