By Barbara Erling
BRANIEWO, Poland (Reuters) -Six kilometres from the Russian border in northern Poland, office administrator Agnieszka Jedruszak is digging a trench. Driven by fear of war with Russia, she wants to be able to defend her family, including her 13-year-old son.
Thousands of Poles like Jedruszak are signing up for voluntary military training as Poland’s army seeks to fill its ranks with professional and voluntary personnel amid escalating concerns over Russia’s military aggression.
“I’d do anything to keep my child safe. And I would definitely want to fight to protect him,” said Jedruszak, dressed in military fatigues, her face painted in camouflage colours.
For many in Poland – which endured decades of Moscow’s domination under the Soviet Union – the fear of Russian hostility looms large. Those concerns have only grown this week after Poland downed Russian drones in its airspace on Wednesday – the first time a member of the NATO military alliance is known to have fired shots during Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The Kremlin this week accused Western countries of an ’emotional overload’ and hostility towards Russia, which it said posed no threat to them. It has declined to comment on the drone incident.
Jedruszak’s military instruction took place in Braniewo, at a training ground for South Korean K-2 tanks, after Poland ordered 180 of them in 2022 under a major military cooperation deal. Nestled among forests and sandy terrain, the site echoed with the roar of tank engines and barked orders.
While she tries to stay focused during her everyday life, Jedruszak says she wanted to prepare for “a new reality”.
“It’s always somewhere in the back of my mind: the thought that something could happen,” said the 36-year-old, who spoke to Reuters before this week’s drone incursion.
More than 20,000 Poles signed up for voluntary military training in the first seven months of 2025 – in line with record levels last year, according to Colonel Grzegorz Wawrzynkiewicz, the head of Poland’s Central Military Recruitment Centre.
He expects around 40,000 volunteers to complete military training by the end of this year, more than double the 16,000 in 2022, reflecting a surge in public engagement since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Since the start of the war in 2022, Poland has more than doubled its defence spending from 2.2% of economic output to 4.7% this year – the highest ratio of military spending in the 32-nation NATO alliance, well ahead of more established European powers like Germany, France and Britain.
The return to the White House of Donald Trump – who has cast doubt on his willingness to defend NATO allies – has reignited European fears over the reliability of U.S. security commitments. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who grew up under Communist rule, has been at the forefront of urging Europe’s leaders to take more responsibility for its defence.
“Countries that have no memory of a Russian occupation or Soviet occupation, for them it’s harder to imagine …what the thing is you’re fighting for,” said Gustav Gressel, an expert on Russia and defense policy, and researcher at the National Defence Academy in Vienna.
CHANGES AFOOT
Fearful of the threat from the east, Poland launched in May last year a 400-mile-long “East Shield” fortification along its borders with Belarus and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad – combining long stretches of anti-tank barriers known as “hedgehogs” with advanced surveillance and electronic warfare systems.
Tusk’s government is also relocating military units to the east to tap into stronger recruitment pools.
“People will be working and serving in places where they’ll be defending their own homes,” said Pawel Zalewski, a deputy defence minister.
The focus of Poland’s military restructuring is on mobility, armoured capabilities, air defence and logistics operations, officials say.
Wawrzynkiewicz, the head of recruitment, said the efforts aim to boost military readiness and presence near Poland’s border, while also creating local employment opportunities in a region with a high jobless rate, historically.
Undergoing military training does not automatically commit people to serve in a war; the programme is designed to be flexible, officials said.
Volunteers can choose to continue into professional military service, to join the Territorial Defence Forces (WOT), or remain part of the active or passive reserve.
Those who join WOT typically serve part-time in their home regions and may be called upon in emergencies or during heightened threats, including natural disasters or border crises, such as when Belarus channelled tens of thousands of migrants toward Poland in 2021 during tensions with the European Union.
Volunteers train alongside professional soldiers but are not embedded in regular units unless they formally enlist. The structure allows for building a scalable force that can support Poland’s defense strategy in times of need – similar to systems used in Lithuania and Germany.
Deputy defence minister Cezary Tomczyk told Reuters that – even as battlefield technology advances – training sufficient personnel remains vital for Poland’s ability to defend itself.
“When there’s a war or some kind of near-war threat, it’s the most basic things that count: that’s fuel, ammunition and people,” he told Reuters.
MILITARY GAP
Poland has the third-largest military in NATO, after the United States and Turkey, with 216,000 personnel, according to the alliance’s estimates.
That’s dwarfed by the size of Russia’s army, which President Vladimir Putin ordered in September to be increased by 180,000 troops to 1.5 million active servicemen.
Still, Poland has rapidly increased its armed forces in recent years – from NATO’S ninth largest army in 2014 – and it plans to further augment its numbers by nearly a third over the next decade.
Poland’s shrinking and aging population presents a challenge, but officials hope that the fresh initiatives will help overcome them.
While some other European members of NATO, including Finland and the Baltic states, have also grown their military ranks, traditional European powers like Germany and Britain have struggled.
Despite increased defence spending and modernization, Germany faces persistent recruitment shortfalls, with some 20,000 positions unfilled and high dropout rates among recruits.
The Bundeswehr currently numbers around 180,000 active personnel, below the 203,000 target set in 2018 and well short of the 260,000 goal recently proposed by Defence Minister Boris Pistorius.
Britain has launched retention initiatives but continues to grapple with low enlistment and morale. The British Army has around 71,000 full-time trained soldiers, its smallest size in over 300 years, and down from around 102,000 in 2010.
Gressel, the researcher at the National Academy in Vienna, said that the readiness to enlist tends to be greater among Eastern Europeans than elsewhere on the continent.
“They are more willing to fight because they can’t just run away,” he said.
EUROPEAN AUTONOMY
Trump’s scepticism toward NATO and opposition to Ukraine’s membership have prompted allies to reassess their defence strategies. European nations have acknowledged the growing threat and have increased their military spending, including through regional defence initiatives like SAFE.
But an analysis in June by Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, concluded that NATO’s ability to respond to Russian aggression remains heavily reliant on U.S. capabilities – especially for fighter jets, missiles and air defence systems.
The Ukraine war has underscored this dependence, with American tech also leading in emerging areas like AI, drones, and satellite networks, Reuters reported.
Moreover, unlike Russia, most European armies lack robust reserve components, making it difficult to sustain heavy losses over extended periods.
“Every conflict shows one thing: the reserves always win, especially long-term ones,” Colonel Pawel Wronka, military assistant to the first deputy chief of the General Staff of the Polish Army Poland, told Reuters.
In February, Tusk announced a new programme to offer voluntary military and civil defence training from next year, with a target to train a total of 100,000 volunteers in 2027.
According to NATO’s public estimates, Russia needs a few years to be ready to fight a war with the West.
“That timeframe is also a horizon for us,” said Zalewski, the deputy defence minister. “We’re ready to face the kind of threat that is real today. And we’re preparing for the threat that will be real tomorrow.”
(Additional reporting by Sarah K. Marsh, Essi Lehto, Andrius Sytas, Elizabeth Piper, Sabine Siebold; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Daniel Flynn)
