US President Joe Biden begins today his second visit to Poland since the beginning of the war in Ukraine on February 24, 2022. In this context, we try to answer the question: why is Poland so important for the USA?

The US president will be in Poland from Monday, February 20 to Wednesday, February 22. His program includes a meeting with President Andrzej Duda, an address to the citizens of Poland (it will be held on Tuesday in the Royal Palace in Warsaw, the general public can participate in it), as well as a meeting with political leaders of the countries Defense structure “Bucharest 9”, founded in 2015 year in Bucharest by presidents Klaus Iohannis and Andrzej Duda.

There is also speculation that Biden will visit a military base in the east of the country, and even that Volodymyr Zelenskyi will join the US president in Poland (perhaps even at a speech of thanks to the Poles), but at the time of writing this information has not been confirmed.

Biden’s visit will be the second to Poland since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. The American president was already here in March 2022.

Then he met with President Duda, as well as with Ukrainian officials who specially arrived in Warsaw (Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov).

In addition, in a speech that also took place at the Royal Palace, Biden made a controversial statement: “For God’s sake, this man (Putin) cannot stay in power.” The White House later clarified that the US president “did not call for regime change in Russia.”

Why is Biden returning to Poland so quickly?

February 24, 2023 is not only the anniversary of the beginning of the war, but also one of the most important moments in its development. Military experts agree that we are entering a new phase, when the Russians are already intensifying attacks on the eastern and southern fronts, which are believed to precede the intensification of the offensive in Donbas.

For their part, the Ukrainians have recently received very powerful military reinforcements and are also preparing for an offensive.

Earlier this year, Western powers broke several taboos about the types of weapons they are willing to send to Ukraine, increasing their willingness to provide offensive weapons to Kyiv.

A year after the start of the war, we are at a time when NATO is closing ranks around Ukraine in the face of a major confrontation – and inevitably taking risks. Poland appears to be an outpost of the North Atlantic Alliance in this indirect confrontation with Russia.

The strongest army of the East

“One of the most important lessons that Poland learned from the war in Ukraine is political: the more effectively you defend yourself against an aggressor, the more likely you are to get help,” Marcin Terlikowski, international security specialist. an expert from PISM, the Polish Institute of International Relations, told me.

“I mean, we have to have a very strong army ourselves if we want to create a space for NATO and the United States to operate. If Poland falls in three days, it will be very difficult for NATO to implement its defense plans on the eastern flank. But if we can defend ourselves early on, we will create time, space and freedom of maneuver for NATO.”

Poland is currently America’s most important eastern partner because it is the largest country after Ukraine, with the strongest military in the region, and which, moreover, has consistently demonstrated its willingness to be an important ally.

For several years, Poland was one of the few countries in our region that paid 2 percent of GDP for defense, in accordance with the obligations of NATO members. This year, it is planned to spend 3 percent on defense, and the leader of the ruling party, Yaroslav Kaczyński, even talked about 5 percent, although he did not give a specific time frame for this goal.

The government plans to increase the army from the current 150,000 soldiers to 300,000, and this includes a territorial army of volunteers, which has already begun to be formed and trained in recent years (the Ukrainian experience also shows that volunteers can be very useful).

The list of weapons purchases in Poland is also impressive. Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak says he wants Poland to have the strongest land forces in Europe, and it may not be an exaggeration if we look at what investments are being made and at what pace.

Poland will certainly have the most advanced tanks in the EU when it implements its plans. Warsaw buys more than 1,000 K2 tanks from South Korea and 366 Abrams (including 250 new ones) from the Americans.

It also wants 700 self-propelled howitzers from the Koreans, 200 HIMARS rocket launchers from the United States, and another 300 Korean model missile launchers. These are only large parts of the armament.

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In addition, Poland has purchased Patriot air defense systems from the Americans, with elements of the first batteries already arriving in the country last month – but there are plans to purchase additional batteries. Currently, the Patriot systems of the Americans and Germans are already located on the territory of Poland, but Poland is additionally purchasing its own.

“The most important thing for Poland, seeing how the war in Ukraine is going, was to buy tanks and artillery in large quantities, including the heaviest tanks in the world, Abrams,” explains Terlikowski.

“They can be used to protect the territory of Poland from a potential ground attack by the Russians. This is exactly the weapon that is used to defend the territories.”

“Of course, the idea is that these purchases have a deterrent effect. We do not necessarily believe that conflict is inevitable. But the whole logic is to have such a strong military force that it deters Russia from any attempts to attack Poland and NATO,” the security expert added.

Chief Advocate of Ukraine

Of course, Poland is important not only for its military. President Joe Biden, addressing the Polish people on Tuesday, plans to thank them for their support of Ukraine since the beginning of the war.

There are many forms of support. It is, of course, about the opening of borders for Ukrainian refugees and how they were supported and helped by ordinary Poles. But not only.

The initiatives by which Poles send humanitarian aid to Ukraine are countless: from doctors coordinating the delivery of medicines and equipment to hospitals near the front, to protective equipment for those fighting in Ukraine, or helping sick refugees admitted to hospitals here or shipped to Western countries. Europe.

In one of the most famous initiatives, the left-wing intellectual Slavomir Serakovsky organized a fundraiser for the purchase of a Bayraktar drone for Ukraine.

The citizens of Poland collected 4.6 million euros for the purchase of the drone, which later went to humanitarian aid to Ukraine, as the Turkish manufacturer decided to donate the device.

Poland is also a key link in the transit of goods and people between Ukraine and the West. The city of Przemyśl in eastern Poland missed not only the majority of Ukrainian refugees on their way to the west, but also all the political leaders of the world on their way to Ukraine.

It is also very important that freight trains carrying grain produced by Ukraine to Western Europe pass through Poland, after Russia blocked exports through the Black Sea.

Speaking at a conference in Warsaw in January, Maciej Popowski, a representative of the European Commission, said that in 2022, Ukraine exported 1.4 million tons of grain via rail lines to the west, bringing an income of 20 billion euros to Kyiv, which is extremely important. money to keep the country afloat.

Finally, representing perhaps one of the most important roles that Poland plays in the war, weapons shipments from the west to Ukraine pass through the country.

Although there is little public information on the subject, it is now considered common knowledge that weapons pass through Polish airports, highways and railways.

In addition, from the beginning, Poland was one of the main supporters of the aggressive arming of Ukraine by the West. In the latest example, Polish political leaders lobbied Berlin very hard to allow the re-export of German Leopard tanks.

With German Chancellor Olaf Scholz still hesitating in January, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that if the Germans did not act quickly, Poland would send Leopard tanks to Ukraine even without Berlin’s permission.

Poland’s total support for Ukraine was perhaps best demonstrated last November, when elements of the Ukrainian air defense system accidentally landed on Polish territory, killing two people in the town of Przewodow, 6 kilometers from the border.

Initially, it was believed that Russian missiles were to blame, but investigators, including American ones, quickly pointed out that a Ukrainian missile was responsible.

But this information did not for a moment shake Poland’s support for Ukraine, and the Warsaw government, known for many blunders or aggressive foreign policy gestures, maintained a perfectly balanced position throughout the crisis.

For all these reasons, a few days before Biden’s visit, there is talk of how President Zelensky himself would like to come to Poland on this occasion and publicly express his gratitude to the Poles.

And also for these reasons, the American president, who cannot come to Ukraine for security reasons, is coming on the anniversary of the beginning of the war to the place that is the closest proxy of Ukraine for the West – Poland.

Klaudia Chobanu is a correspondent in Poland for the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network.

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