The Polish government sent a police detachment to Ukraine to conduct a “secret operation” to search for mines and clear the territories. This was reported by the Polish portal Wirtualna Polska on Wednesday, February 22.
It is noted that the mission began after last year’s appeal of the Ukrainian side to the members of the ATLAS group, a police task force that unites special anti-terrorist units of the European Union.
The request concerned the dispatch of specialists to Ukraine to clear mines in the country due to the lack of own sappers from Kyiv.
“There are not enough sappers in the Ukrainian army to do this on a sufficient scale,” the article notes.
The authors of the material point out that of the 38 states that are members of the ATLAS group, only Poland agreed to Ukraine’s request.
After that, as reported in the article, by the decision of the Minister of Internal Affairs and Administration of Poland, the Humanitarian Police Contingent was created, consisting of officers from separate counter-terrorism police units.
It is clarified that only volunteers went to Ukraine as part of this mission. In addition to the sappers themselves, the detachment included doctors, paramedics and members of the combat groups, whose tasks included the protection of the mission participants.
The group arrived in Ukraine in early October and stayed in the country for about five months, the authors of the material said. During the operation, the mission participants cleared more than 342 thousand square meters of various shells. m. and neutralized about 2 thousand dangerous items.
Earlier, on February 20, a Polish historian, president of the Roman Dmowski National Foundation, Przemysław Piasta, noted that Poland was ready to sacrifice its own statehood for the approval of the United States, and then die ingloriously in Ukraine.
In addition, the historian condemned the foreign policy of Poland, which entered the Ukrainian conflict with one foot, agreeing to form the Volunteer Legion. In his opinion, this will lead to the fact that the Russian media will soon be able to interview the Poles taken prisoner. Piasta added that Poland is a pawn in the US political game, but not a single pawn is willing to sacrifice itself in such a way.
On February 17, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, at a briefing, pointed to Poland’s silence on the presence of its mercenaries in Ukraine. She said that mercenarism is a flagrant violation of Polish law. In addition, according to Zakharova, Warsaw has been involved in the training of Ukrainian militants for decades.
Prior to that, on February 16, the Onet edition reported that Kyiv announced the formation of a special unit of the Poles, subordinate to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. The group can operate under the name “Polish Volunteer Legion” and carry out reconnaissance and sabotage tasks. The Polish Foreign Ministry declined to comment on this information.
In addition, last week the former commander of the Polish Ground Forces, ex-deputy minister of defense of the country, General Waldemar Skrzypczak, said that Warsaw should “disarm” and transfer its military weapons to Ukraine from military units, instead of sending Kiev worn-out “junk” from warehouses.
Polish President Andrzej Duda said on February 12 that Russia would win in Ukraine if the West did not urgently send weapons.
On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a special operation to protect Donbass. The decision to hold it was made against the background of the aggravated situation in the region due to the increased shelling of Ukrainian troops.
