CIESZYN, Poland — At 8 a.m. on a Saturday, almost every seat in the room was already occupied. There were families and office colleagues, couples holding hands, grandparents and teenagers. A group of eight people — mothers and their teenage daughters — shared snacks, drinks and hand cream.
They gathered at the headquarters of the 133rd Light Infantry Battalion of the 13th Silesian Defense Territorial Brigade in Cieszyn, southern Poland, for emergency preparedness training.
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The training sessions for civilians are part of an ambitious new plan by the Polish government to prepare its roughly 38 million inhabitants for the possibility of a military attack from Russia.
The program, wGotowosci, or “Readiness,” is “the biggest defense training in Poland’s history,” said the country’s Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz when announcing it in November. He expects 400,000 citizens to complete the training by the end of this year.
As the war in Ukraine enters its fifth year, the threat of a belligerent Russia weighs heavily on Europe. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly provoked European leaders with hybrid or “gray zone” wars, testing NATO’s resolve with disinformation campaigns, sabotage and cyberattacks.
The challenge for Poland — and every other country in Europe — is how to strengthen a peacetime economy while preparing for war. And that question has become even more urgent as the US-Israeli war against Iran has heightened tensions between President Donald Trump and European leaders, who have refused to participate in the bombing campaign and the American blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
Poland reacted faster and more intensely than any other European country, raising its defense spending to 5% of Gross Domestic Product and buying tanks, fighter jets, drones, missiles, guns and ammunition as if it were at a Black Friday sale.
The country is also expanding its professional Armed Forces, which have 215,000 members and are already the third largest in the North Atlantic alliance, behind only the United States and Turkey.
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But preparing civilians without provoking panic represents a different logistical, economic and psychological challenge. Training needs to be integrated into lives already full of responsibilities at home, work, school and other areas.
The Poles saw the impact of an invasion up close. Millions of Ukrainians, mostly women and children, have crossed the border since Russia’s first surprise attacks at dawn in February 2022.
“Security starts at the head of society,” Lt. Col. Dariusz Pawlik told the group at the start of Saturday’s session. “I hope this training is useful to you and I hope you never have to use it.”
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Several countries near or neighboring Russia — including Finland, Sweden, Norway, Estonia and Lithuania — are also undertaking some form of civil defense preparedness.
In Poland, Army command recognized “that our civil defense was practically non-existent,” said Lt. Tomasz Dzierga, battalion spokesman.
The full-day course, with sections on cybersecurity, crisis preparedness and emergency first aid, is open to students, stay-at-home parents, full-time workers and seniors.
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For 25-year-old Natalia Szoltysek, this is a first step toward possibly joining the Army as a professional soldier.
“I feel this urge, I want to help,” Szoltysek said during a lunch break, when the cafeteria handed out vegetable soup in white bowls. She left her job in December to begin physical training. “I’ve already lost a lot of weight,” he said proudly, tugging at the waistband of his lace-trimmed jeans.
On her right arm, she has a red and black tattoo of a bullet going through a skull, inspired, she said between laughs, by the video game Call of Duty. On the upper chest, the word “chaos” is tattooed in gothic letters surrounded by red roses.
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For Szoltysek, the current climate feels more like a Cold War than a period of peace. “There’s something in the air,” she said.
The survival session offered instructions on how to use common household items in emergency situations. Dryer lint serves as an excellent material for starting a fire. A large trash bag can protect you from the rain. A bucket with a lid can double as a makeshift toilet.
There were long discussions about how to find and purify water, as well as what to include in an emergency escape backpack: lighter, flashlight, duct tape, rope, medicine, knife, radio, rechargeable batteries, blanket and food.
The instructor gave other tips. If you need to evacuate, leave a message for a family member on a wall — not on a piece of paper — using a permanent marker. And write important contact information on young children’s skin in case they get lost.
Jacek Gluchowski, 52, and Tomasz Cios, 51, who work together as project managers at a furniture company, signed up for a series of trainings. For more than a year, they have been discussing what supplies they should keep on hand in case of an attack. Now, Gluchowski said, he plans to prepare an emergency backpack for each member of the family.
The push to increase defense readiness comes at a time when European governments face enormous economic pressure. Many countries are dealing with slow growth and high levels of debt while needing to allocate more resources to security.
And now, the economic outlook has worsened considerably due to the rising costs of fuel, fertilizers and other products caused by the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Magdalena Biskup, a member of the mothers and daughters group, said it was the arrival of a 48-page emergency preparedness guide, recently sent by the government to every household, that for the first time made the reality of the threat concrete.
Still, several participants said that friends and family do not necessarily share the same level of concern. “They don’t want to hear about it,” said Krystian Kucharski, 33, who attended the training with his girlfriend. “They pretend they don’t understand.”
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