Mateusz Morawiecki made the declaration as he visited military exercises in the southeastern Polish town of Nowa Dęba on Wednesday, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.
Earlier in the day, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial mobilisation of 300,000 reservists for his country's military campaign in Ukraine, according to news outlets.
The Kremlin leader warned that Russia had "lots of weapons to reply" to what he described as Western threats, adding that he was not bluffing, the Reuters news agency reported.
Putin’s move came after Moscow-installed authorities in occupied areas of four Ukrainian regions, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, on Tuesday unveiled plans to stage referendums on joining Russia from September 23 to 27.
‘We must show our defensive power’: Polish PM
Commenting on these developments, the Polish prime minister told reporters: “The news of partial mobilisation in Russia has been confirmed. Russia will continue its campaign of destruction and will seek to bring about a destruction of Ukraine and an annexation of parts of its territory.”
“We must not allow this,” he said.
Morawiecki added: “When Russia is showing its brutal might, we must show our defensive power.”
He also stated: "Poland is part of the most important alliance in the history of the world and this is a powerful security guarantee for us."
Putin’s effectiveness ‘extremely limited’
Meanwhile, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Paweł Jabłoński said that Putin was “seeking to escalate the war,” but his effectiveness would be “extremely limited.“
Jabłoński told the state news agency PAP: “Russian President Vladimir Putin is seeking an escalation of the war, but the effectiveness of his real actions, when it comes to military mobilisation and the threats of using nuclear weapons, will be extremely limited.”
Paweł Szrot, chief of staff to Polish President Andrzej Duda, said that the Kremlin’s decree on partial mobilisation signified “nothing new.”
“It merely legitimises a process that has been taking place in Russia for months,” he added.
“It means that the growing, covert mobilisation is taking formal shape,” Szrot told reporters, predicting that the process of preparing new soldiers would be “very difficult” for Russia.
He observed that Russia “is a country that is waging war and has big problems with supplying the army and training new troops.”
Russian army's staffing problems
A Polish military expert said that Putin’s decree on partial mobilisation signalled Russia’s “staffing problems” and "issues with force generation” for the war effort in Ukraine.
Mariusz Cielma, editor-in-chief of the Nowa Technika Wojskowa [New Military Technology] periodical, told the PAP news agency: “This decision [on partial mobilisation] was caused by staffing problems, meagre effects of volunteer recruitment and the early resignations of current servicemen from their contracts.”
Wednesday is day 210 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP, niezalezna.pl