On Wednesday Poland said it would do whatever it took to resolve the migrant crisis on its border with Belarus.
Radoslaw Sikorski, the foreign minister, had previously said that his country did not rule out a complete closure of the border, while Andrzej Duda, the president, raised the border crisis in talks with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, a growing ally of Russia.
“We are ready for any solution in this area because we will not allow this migration crisis caused by Belarus to last indefinitely,” said Cezary Tomczyk, the deputy defence minister.
The warning on migration came as Poland’s armed forces chief also said on Wednesday that the country needed to prepare its soldiers.
“Today, we need to prepare our forces for full-scale conflict, not an asymmetric-type conflict,” General Wieslaw Kukula told a press conference.
“This forces us to find a good balance between the border mission and maintaining the intensity of training in the army,” he said.
Speaking at the same event, Pawel Bejda, the deputy defence minister, said that as of August, the number of troops guarding Poland’s eastern border would be increased to 8,000 from the current 6,000, with an additional rearguard of 9,000 able to step up within 48 hours notice.