News Summary

• In reaction to the incident, Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak told public radio that 10,000 soldiers will be sent to the border – 4,000 would directly support the border guard and the remaining 6,000 would be in reserve.
• “By one calculation, if they purchase all of the tanks from the US, the Abrams tanks, and the tanks they’ve ordered from South Korea, plus modernizing what they have at the moment, they’re going to have more tanks than France, Germany, Italy and the UK combined,” he said.
• At the same time, Poland is just two months away from major elections and Arnold said that aside from showing its capabilities to Russia and its allies, the Polish government is also seeking to reassure its own people that it is committed to security.
• “Security issues are really important, alongside the economy and living standards, which is not surprising since a war is taking place on Poland’s border,” Aleks Szczerbiak, a professor and the head of the politics department at the University of Sussex in England, told CNN.
• At large and in charge, apparently Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko asked the group to help train his country’s military, and earlier this month the two forces held joint training exercises near the Polish border.
• “Law and Justice has shown that it is willing to upset Ukrainians big time where it feels that the alternative would be to alienate Polish farmers,” Shea said, pointing to Warsaw’s decision to ban imports of grain and other food products from Ukraine following a surge in cheap goods.