Polish Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz has said that Russia “is today the biggest threat to global security.”
Macierewicz was speaking at a conference in Brussels on Wednesday focusing on an upcoming NATO summit, which will take place in Warsaw amid heightened tensions with Moscow following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014.
Macierewicz told reporters: “No country in recent history… has undermined international order to the extent Russia has, first attacking Georgia, then Ukraine, and continuously occupying the territory of an independent state, openly indicating that it does not want to accept the independence of that state and its sovereignty. “
He added: “Russia must accept that it is one of many countries in the world with equal rights… but it does not have the right to constantly impose its views, its rules and its army on other countries and other nations.”
Four battalions for Poland and Baltics
NATO defence ministers on Tuesday approved a plan for the military alliance to station four multinational battalions in Poland and the Baltic states on a rotating basis. The plans are expected to be confirmed at a 8-9 July summit of the Western military alliance in the Polish capital. In an interview with Catholic weekly Gość Niedzielny, Macierewicz said that decisions to be taken at the Warsaw summit will guarantee the security of NATO’s eastern flank.
Poland, he added, is the key element of that flank and therefore the foundation of the security of the entire Central European region. “Today an attack on Poland would be an attack on the whole of NATO and the United States in particular,” Macierewicz told Gość Niedzielny.
Meanwhile, some 31,000 soldiers from 18 NATO members and five partner countries have been taking part in major manoeuvres in Poland. The exercises, codenamed Anaconda 16, are a demonstration of NATO’s strength at a time of heightened tensions with Moscow.
