How ordinary poles prepare for a Russian invasion

In a military training area near the city of Wroclaw, ordinary poles stand in line, waiting to be handed over weapons and learned how to shoot. “Once the round is loaded, the weapon is ready to shoot,” the instructor, a Polish soldier, barks his face with camouflage fever.

Young and old, men and women, parents and children, they all came here for one reason: learn how to survive an armed attack.

In addition to a turn of the shooting range, this Saturday morning program, called “Train With The Army”, also learns citizens hand-to-hand fights, first aid and how you can put on a gas mask.

“The times are now dangerous, we must be ready,” says the project coordinator, Captain Adam Sielicki. “We have a military threat from Russia and we are preparing for this.”

Capt Sielicki says that the program is excess, and the Polish government now has plans to expand it so that every adult man gets training in the country. Poland, which shares borders with both Russia and Ukraine, says that this year it will spend almost 5% of GDP on defense, the highest in NATO.

Last week, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that Poland wants to build “the strongest army in the region”. Warsaw has an edition, ships, ships, artillery systems and rockets from the US, Sweden and South Korea, among other things.

Dariusz is one of those who follow the Saturday course in Wroclaw and says that he would be the “very first” to do volunteer work if Poland were attacked. “History has taught us that we must be willing to defend ourselves. We cannot trust anyone else. Today there are alliances and tomorrow they will be broken.”

While he takes his gas mask away, Bartek says he thinks that most posts “record weapons” when he is attacked “and is ready to defend the country.”

Agata is present with a friend. She says that the election of Donald Trump people has been more concerned. “He wants to withdraw (from Europe). That is why we feel less safe. If we are not prepared and Russia attacks us, we will just become their prisoners.”

Statements by Donald Trump and members of his administration have caused great concern among civil servants in Warsaw. During a visit to the Polish capital in February, the American Minister of Defense Pete Hegseeth said that Europe should not assume that the presence of the American troops on the continent will “last forever”.

The US has currently stationed 10,000 troops in Poland, but Washington announced last month that it attracted itself from an important military base in the city of Rzeszow in eastern Poland. Officials say that the troops within Poland will be used, but the move has caused even more unrest in the country.

Donald Trump’s apparent hostility to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zensky, and warm words for the Russian Vladimir Putin, have only added to the care.

Poland will sign a defense agreement with France in the coming days, and another pact with the UK is in the pipeline – further movements of Warsaw to turn away from the historically strong military ties with Washington. There is also talk of Poland that is brought under the “nuclear umbrella” of the French army.

“I think (Trump) certainly forced us to think more creatively about our safety,” says Tomasz Szatkowski, the permanent representative of Poland to NATO and presidential adviser about defense. “I think the US cannot afford to lose Poland, because that would be a sign … that you cannot trust the US. We have to come up with other options and develop our own possibilities.”

“If the Russians continue their aggressive intentions to Europe, we become the first – the gatekeeper,” says Mr. Szatkowski. He attributes the fast military structure of Poland to ‘First of all the geopolitical situation, but also the experience of history’.

The painful legacy of Russian occupation can be felt everywhere here.

In a state-running care home in Warsaw, the 98-year-old Wanda Traczyk-Stawska remembers the last time that Russian troops invaded in 1939, when a pact between Stalin and Hitler led Poles to be carved between the USSR and Nazi Germany.

“In 1939 I was twelve years old. I remember that my father was very worried about (the Russians),” Wanda remembers, “we knew that Russia had attacked us, they benefited from the fact that the Germans had exposed us.”

On a shelf is a photo of Wanda like a hunter, who waves a machine gun during the Warsaw up of 1944, when the Polish underground against the German army fought in the midst of the ruins of the city. After pushing the Germans back in the dying days of the Second World War, the Soviet Union installed a pro-moskou regime in Poland, which ruled the country until 1989.

Currently around 216,000 soldiers and women form the Polish forces. The government says they are planning to raise that to half a million, including reservists-what it would give in NATO after the United States.

I ask Wanda if she thinks it’s a good thing that Poland builds up his army. “Of course, yes. Russia has written this aggression in its history. I’m not talking about people, but the authorities are always like that,” she sighs. “It is better to be a well -armed country than waiting for something to happen. Because I am a soldier who remembers that weapons are the most important thing.”

Eighty years since the end of the Second World War, Poland again look nervously at their neighbors. In a warehouse in the south of Poland, one company has built a mock-up of a bomb care according to the popular demand.

“These hiding places are mainly designed to protect against a nuclear bomb, but also against armed attacks,” says Janusz Janczy, the boss of Shelterpro, who shows me around the steel bunker, complete with bunk beds and a ventilation system. “People simply build these hiding places because they don’t know what to expect tomorrow.”

Janusz says that the demand for his hiding places has risen since Donald Trump took office. “It used to be just a few phone calls a month. Now there are dozens a week,” he says, “my customers are the most afraid of Russia. And they are worried that NATO would not come to defend Poland.”

But are Poles ready to defend the country if those fears become reality? A recent poll showed that only 10.7% of adults said they would join the army as volunteers in the case of war, and a third said they would flee.

On a sunny afternoon in Wroclaw I ask Polish students if they would be ready to defend their country if they are attacked. Most say they wouldn’t do that. “The war is very close, but feels pretty far,” says medical student Marcel, “but if Russia attacked, I think I would run.”

“I would probably be the first to try to escape from the country,” says another student, Szymon. “I just don’t really see something that is worth dying here.”

Additional report from Aleksandra Stefanowicz