The initiative should be ready “by the end of the year,” said Tusk.
Donald Tusk told parliament on Friday that if Russia took control of parts of Ukraine, then Poland would find itself in a “difficult geographical situation.”
He said: “We are preparing large-scale military training for every adult man in Poland. Our goal is to finalize the plan by year’s end to ensure a well-trained reserve force ready for potential threats.
“If Ukraine loses the war, or if it accepts the terms of peace, armistice, or capitulation in such a way that weakens its sovereignty and makes it easier for Putin to gain control over Ukraine, then without a doubt—and we will all agree on this—Poland will find itself in a much more difficult geopolitical situation.”
Talking to reporters, Tusk later clarified that he was not announcing a resumption of basic military service.
“If I were proposing a return to basic military service, I would say so. We have several models. One of the most appreciated ones is the Swiss model,” he said, adding that in the latter system training is “not compulsory, but there are incentives that cause men to opt for annual training.”
There's a lot of things that could be included in such a program that would be useful for the general population to know both in times of war and in peace. Civil defense and emergency response. First aid, evacuation of wounded/incapacitated people from dangerous areas. Basic firefighting, shelter locations and evacuation protocols etc.
So I'm not in.. horrible shape but certainly haven't been exercising recently. The thought did cross my mind of starting again, just in case of complete societal collapse. Never thought id see the day where that was an ACTUAL possibility.
As a pole I absolutely agree, I don't want to die for the ruling class, however I'm also willing to be taught how to defend myself and others against fascist agression for free by the state.
It might be useful against russian fascists, but not only them if you know what I mean 🙃
Edit: about that first point - every man in poland has to pass a military classification anyways when they're about 16 and get assigned an ability score for eventual conscription in war, so the list is already there. It might even prevent conscription because there will likely be more volunteers.
Why just men? Yes, men are generally stronger than women, but that doesn't mean women are not capable of military service. And there are also men who aren't capable of something like that.
Note: I'm against being forced into military service, just asking this
From a repop level men are more desposible than women. Which is funny cause women are second class citizens often. To clarify, 1 woman can only produce on avg 1 child per year. While a man can do far more than that. So if male pop dropped from a wierd disease or war its recoverable. Not ideal obviously from a genetic level but far better than if women population got cut in half. That would cause tons of problems.
Whilst this in theory may hold, people are social animals that live in societies with rules and norms and that typically have only one partner. If half your male population dies, you're not gonna have guys go around having sex with multiple women just to make up the difference, you're just gonna have a lot of single women.
“Of course, it will be open to both sexes,” added the prime minister. “I do not want to belittle the role of women here in any way, but war – due to physical conditions – is associated more with men.”
The reality of it is that men are expendable, from a population standpoint. Birth rates are far more limited by the number of women than the number of men, since pregnancy and gestation takes so long.
Obviously this is over reductive, but it’s one way to approach the question.
The mere existence of russia is causing people of EU so much... All the money making shit that explode, people's time wasted on defence training, nations on rhe border living in constant stress.