NATO member Poland paid tribute Thursday to its historic 1920 victory over the Red Army by honoring fallen Poles and showing off modern tanks and other equipment that it hopes will deter the threat it sees in modern-day Russia.

More than 2,500 Polish troops, joined by dozens of U.S. and other allied soldiers, rode in military vehicles or tanks, or flew in fighter jets and helicopters in Warsaw, the Polish capital, on the Armed Forces Day holiday.

“We must arm ourselves and build such potential that no one will ever dare to attack us,” President Andrzej Duda said before the parade, the culmination of state commemorations.

Some of Poland's new weapons have replaced Soviet- and Russian-made equipment sent to neighboring Ukraine after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of its democratic neighbor on Feb. 24, 2022. Since Poland broke free of Moscow's control starting in 1989 and then joined NATO, it has worked to modernize its army.

Those efforts moved into higher gear after Russia, under President Vladimir Putin, first invaded parts of Ukraine in 2014, and then began its full-fledged assault in 2022, with fears heightened all along the strategic stretch of NATO's eastern flank — from the Baltic nations to Poland to Romania.

“Muscovites always threatened the peace here,” said Radoslaw Prokop, a 49-year-old who watched the parade. “For hundreds of years.”

U.S., British and Romanian soldiers riding in tanks with their national flags waving joined their Polish allies. They are here “at our invitation,” Duda said in his speech, recalling how “in the past there were those here whom we did not invite, who came here by force.”

Jacek Szelenbaum, a 60-year-old truck driver, was among the thousands of spectators. His grandfather was forced to serve in a mounted infantry division of the Russian czar in the early 20th century, the waning years of a long Russian occupation over Warsaw and the surrounding region of Poland.

He said that he realizes the parade is mostly for show, but is still encouraged when he sees the military having more modern weaponry as the years go by.

“We feel a bit better because we see this good equipment, and we feel the presence of our allies, Americans, British, Romanian and others," Szelenbaum said. "It's necessary in this situation, because Poland could never defend itself alone. Only in an alliance can we manage against Putin.”

The holiday falls on the anniversary of the 1920 Battle of Warsaw, in which Polish troops defeated Russian Bolshevik forces advancing on Europe, halting their western march.

The war in Ukraine has reminded Poland of the enduring threat the country has long faced on the flat plains of Central Europe, wedged between larger, more powerful — and often aggressive — neighbors.

Even membership in NATO hasn't eased the sense of threat after Russia's invasion of Ukraine and a migration crisis that erupted in 2021 along Poland's border with Belarus. Warsaw saw a sudden surge that year in large-scale migration from the Middle East and Africa as a form of hybrid warfare organized by Moscow and Minsk.

Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz wrote a letter to soldiers, saying that the holiday is a reminder of “the most glorious episodes of the Polish army, of the price of independence and freedom.”

“On this day, we pay tribute to all the heroes who fought for the homeland from the dawn of our country," he added.

Russia's war against neighboring Ukraine, and the Poland-Belarus border crisis, have led many Poles to fear what the Kremlin might do next, should it succeed in Ukraine.

Poland signed a $10 billion deal earlier this week with the U.S. government for 96 Apache attack helicopters.

Kosiniak-Kamysz said the Apaches, with their modern technology, mark a milestone for Poland's efforts to modernize its military, and would allow Abrams tanks and F-35 aircraft to be used to their full capacities.

The U.S. Embassy said before the parade that “the sky will be filled with American F-35s and Apaches flying alongside our Polish allies!"

“America’s commitment to defending every inch of NATO is unwavering,” the embassy said in a post on X.

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Poland indicts man with spying for Russia after freeing him in swap and investigates others

A man identified as Pablo González, a freelance journalist from Spain who had been based in Poland since 2019, second from left with shaved head, listens to Russian President Vladimir Putin, back to a camera, speaking to released Russian prisoners, part of the biggest prisoner swap between the United States and Russia in post-Soviet history, upon their arrival at the Vnukovo government airport outside Moscow, Russia, on Thursday, Aug. 1, 2024. Gonzalez had another passport and another name: Pavel Rubtsov. 

Polish prosecutors said Wednesday that they formally indicted a Russian-Spanish man on espionage charges, after Poland freed him from prison earlier this month so that he could be included in a prisoner swap between Russia and the West.

Pavel Rubtsov, better known as Pablo González, was arrested on Feb. 28, 2022, days after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in Przemysl, a Polish town near Ukraine’s border. He had presented himself as a Spanish freelance journalist and was filing reports to Spanish media. He had lived in Poland since 2019.

He was held in detention in Poland until he was included in the prisoner exchange on Aug. 1, and is now in Russia. It wasn’t immediately clear why Poland waited until after he had left the country to indict him.

Born Pavel Rubtsov in 1982 in then-Soviet Moscow, González went to Spain with his Spanish mother at age 9, where he became a citizen and received the Spanish name of Pablo González Yagüe. He went into journalism, working for outlets Público, La Sexta and Gara, a Basque nationalist newspaper.

The head of U.K. foreign intelligence agency MI6, Sir Richard Moore, said at the Aspen Security Forum in 2022 that González was an “illegal” who was arrested in Poland after “masquerading as a Spanish journalist" and that he was trying to go into Ukraine to be part of Russian destabilizing efforts there.

The term “illegal” refers to spies who operate under nonofficial cover, meaning that they don’t benefit from diplomatic immunity.

According to investigative media reports, the man also sought contacts with Russian dissidents living abroad and had contacts with Basque and Catalan separatist movements, which are suspected of links to the Kremlin.

The national prosecutor’s office in Warsaw said that a prosecutor in the city of Lublin filed the indictment on Aug. 9 to the District Court in Przemysl. They identified the indicted man as Pablo G. Y. and Pavel R., withholding last names according to Polish privacy laws. However, the details make it clear that the case refers to the suspected GRU agent Rubtsov.

The defendant is accused of committing an offense related to espionage, which can bring a prison term of three to 15 years.

It wasn't immediately clear if Rubtsov would be tried in absentia.

The statement said that the defendant is accused of providing information to Russian military intelligence from April 2016 to February 2022 in Przemysl, Warsaw and elsewhere, "which could cause damage to the Republic of Poland, including as a NATO member state."

It also said his activity included “spreading disinformation and conducting operational reconnaissance."

The 42-year old stepped off a plane and shook hands with President Vladimir Putin when he landed in Moscow on Aug. 1. He was wearing a T-shirt with the image of a Star Wars stormtrooper and the words “Your empire needs you."

The national prosecutor’s office said that investigations are taking place separately into an unspecified number of other people, including a woman they identified only as Magdalena Ch. The woman, known among journalists in Poland to be his ex-girlfriend, refused to comment.

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Maps show how much Russian territory Ukraine is thought to have captured just over a week into its invasion

• Ukrainian forces have advanced miles into Russia since launching their cross-border incursion.

• The shocking invasion has seen Kyiv capture at least 1,000 square kilometers, by some estimates.

• Ukraine's advances can be seen in maps published by the Institute for the Study of War.

Ukraine carried out one of its boldest and riskiest moves of this war last week by launching an offensive that saw its forces invade Russia, stunning Moscow, Kyiv's international partners, and general observers of the conflict.

The Kremlin has been scrambling to respond to the incursion into Russia's western Kursk region, which is on its 10th day and marks the largest attack by a foreign enemy on Russian soil since World War II.

Kyiv claimed earlier this week that its forces had captured about 1,000 square kilometers, or roughly 386 square miles, of Russian territory — almost as much as Moscow has seized in Ukraine this year — and more than 80 settlements within that area since the assault began on August 6.

While the overall goal of the incursion remains somewhat unclear, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has suggested the operation may contribute to negotiations.

"Our advance in the Kursk region is going well today — we are reaching our strategic goal," he said Wednesday in his nightly address to the nation. "The 'exchange fund' for our state has also been significantly replenished."

These advances have been documented by the Institute for the Study of War think tank, which has published daily maps depicting the territory thought to have been taken by the Ukrainians. The creation of these maps relies on uncontradicted Russian sources and other available information on the Ukrainian invasion.

 

 

 

 

While these maps chart Ukraine's advances, at least as well as can be understood in the fog of war, it's unclear exactly how much territory the military actively holds.

Still, the rapid advances over the past 10 days have undoubtedly been significant — harkening back to its fall 2022 counteroffensive in Ukraine's Kharkiv region — but the tempo of operations appears to have slowed as Kyiv faces increasing Russian resistance.

The Biden administration has said the Ukrainian operation has prompted Russian President Vladimir Putin to "make adjustments" to the country's force deployment.

John Kirby, a White House National Security Council spokesperson, said that Russia had redirected some units from operations in and around Ukraine to the Kursk region, though it's unclear how many forces have been moved and how many more could still go.

"We see signs that they are trying to reinforce themselves in and around the Kursk area as a result of Ukrainian operations there," Kirby told reporters Thursday. "Doing that means you're taking assets that were in one place doing one thing, and now they have to go do another."

He added that this "certainly presents a dilemma in the decision-making process."

The intense fighting in the Kursk region has forced more than 130,000 civilians to flee the area, and Ukraine said its forces had also taken hundreds of Russian prisoners of war during the operation.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces captured the town of Sudzha and are setting up a military commandant's office there, Zelenskyy said Thursday, citing a report from his military's commander in chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi.

Sudzha, which is adjacent to a key gas terminal, is the largest town in Russia that the invading Ukrainian forces appear to have captured.

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