Poland launches the “Eastern Shield” project. Gateway to European territory in the west, the country bordering Russia, Ukraine and Belarus has announced investing two billion euros to secure its border and prevent a prolongation of the conflict on its territory. Meanwhile, President Volodymyr Zelensky ensures that his army is solidifying its positions in the face of the Russian offensive in the Kharkiv region, where Russian troops claim the capture of a dozen villages in recent days.
Information to remember
⇒ Poland announces investing two billion euros in its border with Russia and Belarus
⇒ Volodymyr Zelensky says his army is strengthening its bases in the face of Russian attacks around Kharkiv
⇒ Alexeï Navalny’s right-hand man says he will continue to fight against Vladimir Putin
Poland invests 2 billion in its border
Poland will invest more than 2.3 billion euros in the security and fortification of its border with Russia and Belarus, which also constitutes the eastern limit of the European Union, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Saturday. An investment “in our security and especially in securing our eastern border”, said Tusk, presenting a project called “Eastern Shield”. “This system of fortifications, strengthening 400 kilometers of the border with Russia and Belarus, will be an element of deterrence, a strategy to push back the war to our borders,” he added, specifying that the work had already started.
This territory bordering the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad and Belarus as well as Ukraine, fears being a next target of Moscow. Since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, Warsaw has been an unconditional supporter of kyiv and the main transit country for Western arms delivered to it. Faced with the Russian threat, Warsaw undertook a rapid modernization of its army with a defense budget of around 4% of GDP, the highest among NATO countries, and launched a series of billions of dollars purchases of military equipment, mainly in the United States and South Korea.
Ukraine ensures it solidifies its positions in Kharkiv
Volodymyr Zelensky reported on the successes of troops fighting a new Russian attack in the Kharkiv region on Saturday May 18 in his daily evening update. According to him, the Ukrainian forces are on more secure footing. “The occupier loses its infantry and its equipment, a tangible loss, even if, as in 2022, it was counting on a rapid advance on our territory” he affirmed.
These encouraging remarks come as Moscow claims in recent days the capture of a dozen localities in a week around Kharkiv, in a large-scale offensive. On Friday, May 16, Zelensky also warned that kyiv only had a quarter of the air defenses it needed to maintain the front line.
Navalny’s right-hand man ‘will never give up’
Leonid Volkov, former right-hand man of Russian opponent Alexeï Navalny who died in detention in February, and himself attacked in March in Lithuania, promised to “never give up” the fight against President Vladimir Putin despite the threats, according to extracts from an interview revealed on Saturday by the BBC, which must be broadcast in full this Sunday. A request that would come from the former opposition leader himself: according to Volkov, Navalny had asked his loved ones before dying “to never give up and to continue the work… to defeat Putin and build the beautiful Russia of the future” . Keeping this promise is “the only way to preserve his legacy, and to ensure that his sacrifice is not in vain,” Volkov said, interviewed by videoconference by the BBC.
This is the 43-year-old’s first television interview since the March 12 hammer attack outside his home in Vilnius, Lithuania, where the opponent lives in exile. The message of this attack was “we know where you live, we can kill you, we are behind you”, he said. The Polish authorities subsequently indicated that they had arrested and detained a Belarusian sponsor “working for the Russians” and the two perpetrators of the operation, of Polish nationality.