Poland announced on Wednesday that it will deploy K2 Black Panther tanks and K9 Grim howitzers, ordered by it from South Korea, on the border with Russia, Ukrainian Pravda reports with reference to Polish media.

This was announced by the Minister of Defense of Poland, Mariusz Blaszczak, who stated that a transport ship with 5 K2 tanks and 12 K9 howitzers had arrived in the port of Gdynia.

Blaszczak reminded that last year Poland and South Korea signed a contract for the purchase of these combat vehicles, and Warsaw received the first batch last December.

But now the Polish minister has announced for the first time that South Korean tanks and howitzers will be transferred to the 16th Mechanized Division in the Warmian-Masurian region, which borders the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

The “isthmus” between Belarus and the enclave – the Suvalk Corridor – is seen by military analysts as a very likely place to strike in the event of a potential war between Russia and NATO.

Poland urged Putin to “think twice”

“We are creating a force that could deter the aggressor. Putin should think twice before making the wrong decision to attack Poland, because the Polish armed forces are getting stronger and getting the latest weapons,” Mariusz Blaszczak said.

In August 2022, Poland signed an agreement with South Korea to purchase 180 Hyundai Rotem K2 Black Panther tanks worth about $3.4 billion, as well as 212 Hanhwa Defense K9 Thunder self-propelled howitzers worth about $2.4 billion.

In December, Warsaw received the first 10 tanks and 24 howitzers. 22.

Another 820 K2 tanks will be produced in cooperation with a South Korean company in Poland.

NATO is developing closer ties with the US’s Asian allies

The arms deal was signed as the United States encouraged its Asian partners, particularly Japan and South Korea, to develop closer ties with their NATO allies in the context of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

In December, Japan, Britain and Italy announced they were joining forces to build the next generation of fighter jets in a groundbreaking partnership that bridges Europe and Asia and is Japan’s first major defense industrial cooperation outside the United States since World War II. .

The deal, reported by Reuters in July, aims to bring the advanced front-line fighter into service by 2035 by combining the UK-led Future Combat Air System project, also known as Tempest, with the Japanese programme. project called the Global Combat Air Program (GCAP), the three countries announced on Friday.

Japan also announced last year that it was preparing a record defense budget amid escalating tensions with Russia and increasingly aggressive actions by China and North Korea in the region.

This week, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida also announced a massive new package of measures to counter China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific region, pledging to invest tens of billions of dollars in the region.

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