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Today on State of the World, Poland prepares for war. You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon. Three years ago, Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine altered security calculations in Europe. More recently, President Trump's efforts to change the U.S. relationship with Europe and NATO have again caused some countries in Europe to rethink their own defense.
One example of this is Poland, which is taking steps to repel a potential Russian invasion. The country shares a 500-mile border with Russia and Russian ally Belarus.
Earlier this year, Prime Minister Donald Tusk called on all Polish men to begin military training. He told Poland's parliament in March that by the end of the year, the aim is for every adult male to be ready to fight in a war. NPR's Rob Schmitz takes us to Poland to see how the country is preparing. March!
A military band marches in front of an unwavering row of Poland's newest soldiers. Dozens of men and women who have answered the call to volunteer to protect their country against Russia. Watching from the sidelines at this ceremony outside of Warsaw is Anita Milewski, whose partner Dominik is about to take his oath to protect and serve. No, I can't.
Męstwa, żołnierstwa, bycia oddanym, bycia służbistą.
I'm emotional, she says, and a little nervous. We live in difficult times, and I feel like more difficult times are coming. There's a need, she says, for courageous people, tough people. And our Dominique is a rock. He's unbreakable.
Dominik takes his oath and the band plays the national anthem. Behind them stand a row of four Abrams tanks. After the ceremony, Dominik glances longingly at them. The past month of basic training was intense, he says. We barely had time to rest. Now I'm staying on for specialized training. It's my dream to drive one of those tanks someday.
These soldiers, these tanks, they're all part of Poland's overhaul of its military. This year, the country will spend nearly 5% of its GDP on defense, more than any other NATO member, including the U.S. As a neighbor of Ukraine's and host to more than 2 million of its war refugees, Poland has seen, heard, and felt what Russia is capable of. And it's now preparing for the worst.
Hundreds of miles north of the capital, along Poland's border with Russia, bulldozers clear farmland for a landmine field, while crews place neat rows of concrete anti-tank structures called hedgehogs that look like massive gray Lego pieces. On a work break, Polish Lieutenant Iwona Misiatz gives me a tour of Poland's newly fortified border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
We peer into a deep ditch filled with water, and beyond that stand rows of hedgehogs that follow the curved border for as far as the eye can see. On the other side of the ditch, beyond a fence made of razor wire, is dense birch forest. Russia.
We've learned from Ukraine's experience with Russia's invasion, and we've applied those lessons here, she says. These hedgehogs are here so that our enemy breaks his teeth before he even thinks of biting us. And here, she says, pointing to a strip of land as wide as a football field, is a space for a minefield.
Poland recently announced it was withdrawing from the Ottawa Convention, an international treaty banning the use of landmines. What we're seeing here, says Ms. Yartz, is what much of the 500-mile-long border between us and Russia and Belarus will someday look like. A very long ditch, columns of concrete hedgehogs and landmine fields. This, she says, is going to be a lot of work.
Poland has set aside more than $2 billion to build this, and its treasury is buying up land from farmers along the border for this new initiative. But that's not all the action that's happening along this tense border.
Hundreds of miles east, along another stretch of the same border, U.S. soldiers conduct training exercises. We have developed a strategy to counter any kind of mass land grab or mass land invasion or incursion that would occur. Lieutenant Colonel William Branch is commander of the Forward Land Forces Multinational Group Poland, a group of 1,000 U.S. soldiers at the Momowo-Piski training area in northeastern Poland.
His troops helped defend NATO's eastern front along a stretch of land known as the Suvalki Gap, a corridor where military strategists say Russia would likely target if it were to attack NATO member states.
Branch's soldiers have made visits to the nearby Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. And along with Poland, he says, There's a persistent theme in all of those visits. These countries are actively fighting to retain their sovereignty. They're actively fighting to continue to exist because there is a real threat that exists.
And while there is a real threat, agrees Mariusz Marszakowski, publisher of Defense 24, a Warsaw-based security magazine. He says Russia's European neighbors have had time to prepare, drawing on years' worth of lessons from Ukraine to study how Russia wages war. America is accustomed to quick aerial wars, he says, but Russia has retained its arsenal from the Soviet Union days.
And that means, he says, low-tech land-based warfare is what Poland is focusing on defending itself against. But Marszalkowski says the challenge now is figuring out President Donald Trump. Would the U.S. defend Poland if Russia attacked?
He says Poland's government has handled this question in vague diplomatic terms, but its actions, he says, show that it's beginning to look elsewhere for help. The Polish government, he says, sees hope in France, which has an extensive nuclear arsenal, and the terms under which it can use these weapons are different from Britain's, which require American consent before they deploy them.
So from a security perspective, he says France is a safer option from where to seek assistance.
In the next few months, he says, Poland and France will sign big strategic agreements of security cooperation that may include Poland's purchase of French air tankers, submarines, and weaponry, and may also include an agreement that Poland will now be inside France's protective nuclear umbrella. An agreement, he says, that could be as important as defense barriers along Poland's borders or a buildup of Poland's military. Anything, he says, to stop Russia.
Rob Schmitz, NPR News, Poland. That's the state of the world from NPR. Thanks for listening.