Mariusz Kamiński told a news conference in Warsaw on Tuesday that the ongoing Wolf-Ram-23 counterterrorism drills were being held jointly by Poland’s police force and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Kamiński said: “Yesterday we launched the biggest counterterrorism exercise in the history of the Polish police force, co-organised by Polish police and the US Department of Justice’s Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
He added the Wolf-Ram-23 exercise "features some 2,600 Polish police officers, but also firefighters, paramedics and Internal Security Agency (ABW) personnel, as well as several dozen FBI agents.”
Kamiński told reporters that the number of FBI personnel involved "represents arguably the biggest-ever FBI presence in a European exercise,” Polish state news agency PAP reported.
'We must be prepared for various worst-case scenarios'
The interior minister said that officers were "practicing response to a possible terror attack on Polish soil" as part of the Wolf-Ram-23 exercise.
He told reporters: “We must be prepared for various worst-case scenarios and that’s what police officers and other personnel are doing during these drills.”
Kamiński said Wolf-Ram-23 envisaged terrorist attacks “using chemical, biological, radioactive and nuclear material,” and was therefore “a highly complex exercise, requiring extraordinary performance and coordinated action by various agencies.”
He added that the drills gave Polish officers an “immensely valuable” opportunity “to benefit from the knowledge, experience and tactics of FBI agents.”
Counterterrorism drills
Co-organised by the Polish police and the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate, the three-day Wolf-Ram-23 exercise began at 7 p.m. on Monday at two subway stations in the capital Warsaw, the PAP news agency reported.
The drills featured firefighters, among other personnel, who practiced "ways to examine and neutralise a dangerous substance of unknown origin," and "to evacuate the injured," according to officials.
Poland’s police chief Jarosław Szymczyk told reporters that the exercise would continue on Tuesday and Wednesday, “in Warsaw as well as in the central Łódzkie region and the western Wielkopolskie province.”
Officers were set to practice a manhunt stretching over an extended area, "among other elements," Szymczyk added.
Preparing Polish agencies to deal with modern threats
Meanwhile, Daniel Lawton, Deputy Chief of Mission at the US embassy in Warsaw, said that the Wolf-Ram-23 drills were part of “the partnership between the Polish police force and the FBI.”
The US official added that the exercise had taken a year to prepare and was designed to make Polish police and other government agencies more effective in responding to the most complex incidents and threats of the modern world, the PAP news agency reported.
Lawton said that more joint exercises would be held in the future and added that the partnership between Poland and the United States “is of enormous value to both sides.”
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, dziennik.pl, interia.pl