A Polish minister has insisted to Euronews his country’s upcoming election in October will be free and fair, despite warnings from observers and opposition politicians.
Minister of Digitalisation Janusz Cieszyński hit back at claims security concerns were being leveraged by the ruling Justice and Development Party (PiS) to influence the vote.
“If we don’t invest in our army right now, we might just end up paying for our enemy’s army that’s going to be stationed in Poland in the future,” he told Euronews. “This is how our history has turned out in the past, and we don’t want it to repeat.”
Poland was “under almost as much a threat as Ukraine” from Russian cyber attacks, Cieszyński continued.
Poland, once a satellite state of the USSR, recently beefed up its border security, deploying 10,000 troops on its frontier with Belarus.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki promised last November the country would have “the most powerful land force in Europe”.
Some analysts claim this defensive build-up is part of a political campaign before the upcoming elections, plus they worry about the cost.
“This government is playing, using the army to ensure security. Around this, politics is made, but this has nothing to do with security, it is to help the authorities maintain power,” Jaroslaw Kociszewski, a security expert at Kolegium Nowa Europa Wschodnia, Stratpoints, told Euronews in August.
Others have also warned about the impact of the
