MARIUSZ BLASZCZAK

Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak and U.S. officials attended a ceremony Tuesday to formally upgrade the U.S. military presence in NATO member Poland amid the war in neighboring Ukraine. There are more than 10,000 American troops stationed in the former communist bloc country.

Wary of Russia's larger territorial ambitions, Poland has been steadily modernizing its military by boosting its manpower and ordering new equipment from allies.

Poland's defense minister hopes to build “the largest land force in Europe,” and Warsaw has been signing billions in weapons contracts with U.S. suppliers.

The Polish ruling party leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, has made a donation for the needs of the Ukrainian army to settle a defamation case with a political rival.

Western defense leaders meeting at Ramstein Air Base in Germany have failed to resolve divisions over possibly providing battle tanks and other military aid to Ukraine.

The French and Polish defense ministers have agreed to a deal under which France will provide Poland with two observation satellites and a receiving station.

Polish President Andrzej Duda and the country's defense minister have taken delivery of a first shipment of tanks and howitzers from South Korea, hailing the swift implementation of a deal signed in the summer in the face of the war in neighboring Ukraine.

Poland’s government says an anti-missile system which Germany offered to send to Poland should instead go to Ukraine.

Polish soldiers have begun laying razor wire along Poland’s border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

Polish soldiers began laying razor wire Wednesday along Poland's border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad after the government ordered the construction of a barrier to prevent what it fears could become another migration crisis. Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said a recent decision by Russia’s aviation authority to launch flights from the Middle East and North Africa to Kaliningrad led him to take measures that would strengthen security “by sealing this border.” Blaszczak told a news conference in Warsaw that the border needs to be sealed in order for Poland to feel secure.

Canada’s defense minister has announced that her country will deploy approximately 40 combat engineers to Poland to train Ukrainian sappers in mining, de-mining, engineer reconnaissance and explosives.

Poland and Czechia have signed an agreement to protect Slovak airspace as Slovakia gives up its old Soviet-made MiG-29 jets.

Polish officials are marking their nation’s Armed Forces Day holiday alongside the U.S. army commander in Europe and regular American troops, a symbolic underlining of NATO support for members on the eastern front as Russia wages war nearby in Ukraine.

A few dozen elite troops and equipment from the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division have landed in southeastern Poland near the border with Ukraine.

Poland's prime minister says he will hold a series of talks in Europe about the pressure of migrants on the European Union’s border with Belarus, a crisis that he expects will continue.

Hundreds if not thousands of migrants have sought to storm the border from Belarus into Poland, cutting razor wire fences and using branches to try and climb over them.

Poland’s ruling party leader has presented plans for a homeland defense bill.

The prime ministers of Poland and Lithuania say that tighter security at their borders with Belarus was the best way of easing pressure from migrant inflows there, as they expect the “hybrid attack” from Belarus to intensify.

Poland’s Defense Ministry says it plans to build a fence along its border with Belarus and deploy more soldiers there to stop migrants seeking to enter the country.

(AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)WARSAW – Central European leaders pushed Wednesday for faster deliveries of COVID-19 vaccines from every reliable manufacturer to speed up inoculations which they said is the way to conquer the pandemic and jump-start Europe’s economic recovery. The leaders of Hungary, Slovakia and Poland said they support purchasing vaccines from manufacturers regardless of “geopolitics” provided they are safe and effective. Hungary is the European Union's first and so far only member state to administer Russia's Sputnik V vaccine without waiting for approval from the European Medicines Agency. “There is no Eastern or Western vaccine, there is only a good or a bad vaccine,” Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban told a news conference in Krakow, Poland. European Council President Charles Michel, who attended the celebrations, said EU leaders will discuss next week ways of increasing vaccine production and of speeding up inoculations.