‘The quiet times have passed'

Poland prepares defences against rising risk of war

- Shaun Walker and Ada Petriczko Warsaw

Cezary Pruszko still remembers the civil defence training of his communist-era schooldays - map reading, survival skills, and a sense that the danger of war was real and ever present.

"My generation grew up with those threats. You didn't have to explain why this mattered," said Pruszko, 60, as he refreshed those skills at an army base outside Warsaw on a recent frosty Saturday morning. With dozens of other Polish civilians, he toured a bomb shelter, fitted gas masks and practised striking sparks from a flint to start a fire.

The training, designed to boost civilian resilience, was part of a voluntary scheme that aims to train 400,000 Polish citizens by 2027. It is open to anyone from schoolchildren to pensioners.

"We are living in the most dangerous times since the end of the second world war," said Poland's defence minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, at the scheme's launch last month. "Each of us must have the skills, knowledge and practical knowhow to cope in a crisis."

There is an acute awareness in Poland of how the country's geographical location at the centre of Europe has left it historically vulnerable to attack. The full-scale invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in 2022 focused minds, and this year drone incursions into Polish airspace and a wave of sabotage attacks linked to Russian intelligence have added to the alarm. Most recently, a railway line was blown up last month, with authorities claiming Russia had organised the attack and had intended to cause casualties.