Tag Archives: Poland

New U.S.-led force to deter Russia in Poland with NATO

U.S. (R to L), Poland's flags and jack of the President of Poland are seen during the inauguration ceremony of bilateral military training between U.S. and Polish troops in Zagan, Poland,

By Robin Emmott

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – A U.S.-led battalion of more than 1,100 soldiers will be deployed in Poland from the start of April, a U.S. commander said on Monday, as the alliance sets up a new force in response to Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

More than 900 U.S. soldiers, around 150 British personnel and some 120 Romanian troops will make up the battlegroup in northeastern Poland, one of four multinational formations across the Baltic region that Russia has condemned as an aggressive strategy on its frontiers.

“This is a mission, not a cycle of training events,” U.S. Army Lt. Colonel Steven Gventer, who heads the battlegroup, told a news conference. “The purpose is to deter aggression in the Baltics and in Poland … We are fully ready to be lethal.”

Britain, Canada and Germany are leading the other three battlegroups in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which are due to be operational by June. They will have support from a series of NATO nations including France.

In total, some 4,000 NATO troops – equipped with tanks, armored vehicles, air support and hi-tech mission information rooms – will monitor for and defend against any potential Russian incursions.

Moscow, which denies having any expansionist or aggressive agenda, accuses NATO of trying to destabilize central Europe and has respond by forming four new military divisions to strengthen its western and central regions and stepping up exercises.

Seeking to avoid stationing troops permanently on Russia’s borders, the new NATO force across the Baltics and Poland can rely on a network of eight small NATO outposts in the region, regular training exercises and, in the case of attack, a much larger force of 40,000 alliance troops.

“We are not the entirety of NATO’s response,” said U.S. Army Major Paul Rothlisberger, part of the U.S.-led battalion to be based in Orzysz, 220 kilometers (137 miles) northeast of Warsaw.

The alliance is seeking to show the ex-Soviet countries in NATO that they are protected from the kind of annexation Russia orchestrated in February in 2014 in Ukraine’s Crimea.

It also wants to avoid a return to the Cold War, when the United States had some 300,000 service personnel stationed in Europe, and stick to a 1997 agreement with Moscow not to permanently station forces on the Russian border.

The plan is being implemented as Western powers try for a peace settlement in eastern Ukraine, where NATO says Russia supports separatist rebels with weapons and troops.

Russia plans to stage large-scale war games near its western borders this year, but has not said how many troops will take part.

(Reporting by Robin Emmott; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Dozens of survivors pay homage to victims of Auschwitz

Survivors walk in remains of Nazi German concentration camps

OSWIECIM, Poland (Reuters) – Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo and some of the last survivors of Auschwitz paid homage to the victims of the Holocaust on Friday, 72 years after the Nazi death camp was liberated in the final throes of World War Two.

At a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe, Szydlo told dozens of people gathered in the camp that the suffering of the victims was a “wound that … can never be healed and should never be forgotten”.

“No one can understand this suffering,” Szydlo said. “I want a message to go out again from this place today that what happened in this German camp was evil … An evil that can be overcome with good. Memory and truth are our responsibility, they are our weapons against evil.”

Nazi German occupation forces set up the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in Oswiecim, around 70 km (45 miles) from Poland’s second city, Krakow.

Between 1940 and 1945, Auschwitz developed into a vast complex of barracks, workshops, gas chambers and crematoria.

More than a million people, mainly European Jews, were gassed, shot or hanged at the camp, or died of neglect, starvation or disease, before the Soviet Red Army entered its gates in early 1945 during its decisive advance on Berlin.

Szydlo’s conservative government worries that the world will forget that Auschwitz was a German camp, and has launched a campaign against any mention of “Polish death camps” in international media.

Of the six million Jews who died during the Holocaust, about half had been living in Poland.

(Reporting by Janusz Chmielewski; Writing by Justyna Pawlak; Editing by Lidia Kelly and Kevin Liffey)

French foie gras makers worry as bird flu spreads in Europe

Employee holds a duck liver in at a poultry farm in Doazit, Southwestern France,

By Sybille de La Hamaide

PARIS (Reuters) – New outbreaks in Europe of a severe strain of bird flu pose a fresh worry for French foie gras producers, already reeling from lost sales last year when the virus emerged in southwestern France.

The run-up to Christmas coincides with peak demand for the delicacy, France’s favorite festive treat, made from duck or goose liver.

Marie-Pierre Pe from foie gras makers group CIFOG, said on Monday that prices could be 10 percent higher this Christmas after the French government’s decision last year to cull all ducks and geese, and halt output for four months, in a bid to contain the virus.

Farmers hope that stricter measures in place at French farms to spare birds from contamination after last year’s crisis will better protect their industry should the current outbreak of the H5N8 strain, already seen in neighboring Germany and Switzerland and other European countries, hit France.

“When I heard about new bird flu cases in Europe, I thought: It can’t be true, the nightmare is not going to start all over again,” Pe told Reuters.

“We did all that is needed to prepare farmers since the start of the year but we are never immune from birds contaminating a farm,” she said.

Producers estimate the freezing of output had cost the industry around 500 million euros ($539 million), including a 270 million euros loss in sales and additional costs for new biosecurity material.

The 25 percent drop in output and higher costs will lead to the rise in prices of foie gras products this year, Pe said.

Sold whole or as a pate, foie gras is considered a gourmet food in Western and Asian cuisine, but the practice of force-feeding has often been criticized as cruel by animal activists.

CIFOG held regular meetings with farmers this year to explain biosecurity measures put in place after the crisis, such as better protecting food and water from wild birds, Pe said. Farmers in southwestern France, the top foie gras producing region, also face stricter rules to avoid contamination between farms, notably through equipment disinfection.

As well as Germany and Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Croatia, have also reported outbreaks of the highly contagious H5N8 bird flu in recent weeks.

No case of bird flu has been found in France so far this time but the country raised surveillance measures on Thursday to keep wild migrating birds from transmitting the virus to farm poultry.

Denmark ordered farmers to keep their poultry indoors on Monday due to the bird flu threat and Germany said it was considering ordering farmers to keep their flocks inside.

(Reporting by Sybille de La Hamaide; Editing by Susan Fenton)

Treasure hunters dig for mysterious Nazi-era train in Poland

A mining car is seen in a chamber, part of the Nazi Germany "Riese" construction project, pictured near an area where a Nazi train is believed to be, in Walim near Walbrzych southwestern Poland,

WARSAW (Reuters) – Polish and German treasure hunters have started digging at a site in southwest Poland where they believe a Nazi-era train rumored to have gone missing is hidden – despite the scepticism of experts.

Andreas Koper and Piotr Richter said last year they had located the train buried underground. According to local legend, it was carrying looted jewels and guns and disappeared into a tunnel ahead of advancing Soviet Red Army forces in 1945, towards the end of World War Two.

They secured the permissions needed to begin digging despite a study by AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow concluding that a train is unlikely to be buried in the location the two amateur explorers have specified.

On Tuesday, the pair led a team of explorers in excavations at three separate sites inside a fenced-off area in the district of Walbrzych.

“We have to find a railway track, probably the entrance to a railway tunnel and, if the tunnel exists, there should be a train there,” Andrzej Galik, a spokesman for the treasure hunters, told Polish media.

“What do we expect? To unveil a sort of time capsule, something from that era, from the period of World War Two … We are hoping to be successful.”

Galik said ground-penetrating radar examinations were “very promising”. The team is expected to announce findings in coming days.

(Reporting By Reuters Television)

Bleak picture reigns as EU presidents debate future of Europe

European Parliament President Schulz and European Commission President Juncker talk during a meeting at the Capitol Hill in Rome

By Crispian Balmer

ROME (Reuters) – The presidents of Europe’s three main institutions on Thursday presented a bleak picture of the European Union, saying the 28-nation bloc lacked leadership and was descending into petty, nationalistic politics.

“We have a lot of salesmen in the European Council and only a few statesmen,” said Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, bemoaning the current crop of EU government chiefs who are struggling to overcome a string of crises.

Schulz joined European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and EU Council President Donald Tusk for a debate on the future of Europe in the room where the Treaty of Rome was signed in 1957, which laid the foundations of today’s European Union.

“The idea of one EU state, one vision … was an illusion,” said Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, who is now tasked with finding consensus and cohesion amongst EU leaders.

Such unity has become an almost impossible mission at a time when hundreds of thousands of migrants are fleeing into Europe in search of a better life, sending a shockwave through the staid and conservative continent.

Britain, the Union’s second biggest economy, is due to hold a referendum in June on whether to withdrawal from the bloc.

Years of economic underperformance, particularly in the continent’s southern rim, have also frayed the fabric of European solidarity.

“PART-TIME EUROPEANS”

“We have full-time Europeans when it comes to taking and part-time Europeans when it comes to giving,” said a particularly downbeat Juncker, adding that the “part time” Europeans were often those who received most from EU funds — a clear reference to new member states from the east.

Without naming names, Tusk also said that the newcomers were often the most opposed to finding a common policy on the migration crisis “sometimes in a very irritating fashion”.

Italy and Greece are the main ports of entry for the migrants but say they should then be sent on to other European countries to share the burden.

However, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary have rejected European Commission plans to introduce mandatory quotas of refugees and have accused Brussels of trying to blackmail them.

Juncker, a former Luxembourg prime minister who has been at the heart of EU policy making for three decades, reminisced about the time when Europe moved towards economic union and created the single euro currency.

“In former times we were working together … we were in charge of a big piece of history. This has totally gone,” he said, complaining that EU citizens did not understand what the European Union was trying to do.

“This is fertile ground for the populists.”

Tusk, Juncker and Schulz are in Rome for the presentation of the Charlemagne Prize to Pope Francis on Friday. The prize is awarded to people who are seen to have furthered the cause of European unification.

(Reporting by Crispian Balmer; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Russia says will respond to NATO build up in Poland, Baltics

Russian President Putin and Defence Minister Shoigu attend a wreath laying ceremony to mark the Defender of the Fatherland Day at the Tomb of the

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia will be forced to take retaliatory measures if NATO deploys four extra battalions in Poland and the Baltic states, Interfax news agency quoted a senior Russian Foreign Ministry official as saying on Wednesday.

“This would be a very dangerous build-up of armed forces pretty close to our borders,” Andrei Kelin, a department head at the ministry, said. “I am afraid this would require certain retaliatory measures, which the Russian Defence Ministry is already talking about.”

Russia will form three new military divisions to counter what it believes is the growing strength of The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) near its borders, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu announced on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Jack Stubbs; Writing by Dmitry Solovyov)

Polish president Duda says Russia fomenting new Cold War

WARSAW (Reuters) – Polish President Andrzej Duda accused Russia of fomenting a new Cold War through its actions in Ukraine and Syria, and said Poland was ready to help any future NATO efforts in combating the Islamic State.

In an interview with Reuters, Duda hit back at comments by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who last week described East-West relations as descending “into a new Cold War” and said NATO was “hostile and closed” toward Russia.

“If Mr Medvedev talks about a Cold War, then looking at Russian actions, it is clear who is seeking a new Cold War,” Duda, allied to Poland’s ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) said in an interview in his presidential palace in Warsaw.

“If someone is undertaking aggressive military activities in Ukraine and Syria, if someone is bolstering his military presence near his neighbors … then we have an unequivocal answer regarding who wants to start a new Cold War. Certainly, it is not Poland or the NATO alliance.”

The West says it has satellite images, videos and other evidence that show Russia is providing weapons to anti-government rebels in Ukraine, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Russia denies such accusations.

Poland has long been one of the fiercest critics of Russian actions and PiS is especially mistrustful. It wants a summit in Warsaw this year to bolster NATO’s presence in central and east Europe by positioning troops and equipment on Polish soil.

Duda reiterated Polish ambitions for an “intensive” NATO presence on its territory to be agreed at the July summit, which would be “tantamount to a permanent presence” — an arrangement that would be assured by troop rotations. Some NATO allies are reluctant, out of concern over the cost and the further deterioration with Moscow that would be likely to result.

F-16s AND RECONNAISSANCE

Duda’s unexpected election victory last May was the first ballot win for PiS in almost a decade. It helped the party win a parliamentary vote in October on a campaign of conservative values and more economic equality.

A relatively unknown politician before the election, Duda, 43, sees himself as a spiritual and political heir to Poland’s late president, Lech Kaczynski. Kaczynski, the twin brother of PiS leader Jaroslaw, died in a plane crash in 2010.

Local critics say Duda and Prime Minister Beata Szydlo merely follow the lead of Jaroslaw Kaczynski rather than make their own policy — an accusation he rejected in the interview, saying he was there to implement PiS’s agreed program.

Duda said Poland was ready to participate in any NATO efforts in Syria, but without sending troops, an offer the Polish government has made before. In return, it wants NATO to bolster its presence in eastern Europe.

“We are not shirking our responsibility here,” Duda said. “There are no decisions yet, but we are a member of the alliance.”

Duda said Poland would be willing to use some of its fleet of F-16 fighter jets for reconnaissance missions and to participate in training missions.

A coalition led by the United States is bombing Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq, where the militant group occupies swathes of territory.

The United States is pressing NATO to play a bigger role in the campaign, putting Washington at odds with Germany and France. They fear the strategy would risk confrontation with Russia, which is conducting its own air strikes in the region in support of its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

All 28 NATO allies are already part of a 66-nation anti-Islamic State coalition, so the United States is looking to NATO to provide equipment, training and the expertise it gained in Afghanistan, where Poland also had troops.

(Additional reporting by Adrian Krajewski, writing by Justyna Pawlak, Editing by Larry King)

Jewish Cemetery In Poland Defaced In Anti-Semitic Attack

Anti-Semitic vandals desecrated a Jewish cemetery near the site of “Bloody Wednesday” where Jewish men were gathered in the town square of Olkusz, Poland and beaten in 1940.

The vandals painted pentagrams on the tombstones they knocked over and destroyed.   They also painted the Polish name of Pope John Paul II on some stones.

“Bloody Wednesday” took place in Olkusz on July 31, 1940.  Soldiers went through the town gathering the Jewish men to bring to the town’s square.  The men were then severely beaten by the soldiers and residents of the town.

One of the most offensive moments was captured in photographs of the incident when Rabbi Moshe Yitzchak Hagerman is forced to stand barefoot standing over six Jewish men who were forced to lay on the ground in front of Nazi troops.  Hagerman was forced to wear a prayer shawl that the soldiers had urinated upon moments earlier.

Hagerman was killed in Majdanek in 1942.  The rest of the town’s Jews were shipped to Auschwitz in 1942 where most were killed.