BOORSEE

Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz laid out his country’s plans to deal with feared Russian aggression, such as possible missile infiltrations and conflict on its borders, in an interview with VOA Eastern Europe Bureau Chief Myroslava Gongadze.

Plans include bolstering air defenses to building a $2.1 billion “East Shield,” he said Tuesday.

“Polish F-16s are ready to act if a missile threatens our territory,” he said, confirming the military’s heightened readiness amid the war in Ukraine. Kosiniak-Kamysz emphasized the urgency of European countries pulling their weight in defense, warning that NATO’s unity is key to keeping American forces in Europe.

With the war in Ukraine showing no signs of letting up, Poland is leading the charge in Europe, spending more on defense than any other NATO member and urging others to follow suit.

This interview, translated from Polish, has been edited for brevity and clarity.

VOA: You’re buying a lot of equipment from the United States. How do you assess this cooperation, and what are you looking forward to?

Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz: Our cooperation is really at the best possible level. I have concluded several contracts worth dozens of billions of dollars, including the purchase of 26 Apache aircraft. Poland will be one of the best armies equipped with attack aircraft, Apaches. We’re talking about a strategic partnership, and I think we are meeting President [-elect Donald] Trump’s expectations. We’re spending a lot on armaments, and we have good trade relations. We’re buying a lot of equipment in the U.S. That’s a guarantee of security, as well as it is investment in U.S. production.

VOA: How do you assess the Russian threat today, and who are Poland’s main adversaries?

Kosiniak-Kamysz: Russia is the greatest threat since the end of World War II. Many people have said that since the end of the second World War, but today, it’s not the Cold War. We have an active war just beyond our border. We have crises — a conflict in the Near East. We have a conflict situation in the Pacific and also, recently, the developments in Syria have totally changed the position of Russia, Iran and other countries. So, we are living in very difficult times. Poland is spending 4.7% of its GDP —the greatest amount among NATO member states on defense — on armaments. Why are we spending that money? Because the situation is utmost difficult. The threat from Russia is realistic. The citizens of Ukraine are experiencing it every day.

VOA: How important it is to invest in defense, and how would you encourage others to put more into defense?

Kosiniak-Kamysz: Two percent is not enough. It is the absolute minimum. I believe that the 2% of GDP that NATO countries have committed to, and those that do not meet it, will not even be invited to the table with the new Trump administration. … So, all countries must fulfill their obligations. … Europe must do more for security, not to replace the Americans in Europe, but to keep them in Europe. If we do not spend more on security, if other countries do not follow Poland’s example, we will not be able to keep Americans in Europe.

The EU has created the program for defense development, but it has assigned just 1.5 billion euros ($1.55 billion). It’s just symbolic. Where are the capacities to manufacture the munitions that North Korea, Russia and Iran have? Europe, as well as the Western world, the U.S., Canada and our allies don’t have those capacities. We have to make up for it. 100 billion euros ($103 billion) — that would be the money we should be talking about.

VOA: So, are you saying that Europe is not ready to fight the active war today?

Kosiniak-Kamysz: We are ready — we have to be ready each day. But Europe has to be more ready to a better extent each day. So, it’s not enough to say that we are ready and do nothing. A lot has happened since the outbreak of war in Ukraine. But it’s still not enough to say that it’s at the best level. We have to be ready to fight each time of day and night, each state. We are prepared for that. But each day, we could be prepared better, hence the pressure that we are exerting on other countries. Hence the building of a resilient society. This is something that Western societies don’t have today. …

We have already been attacked with lies, fake news, with misinformation. And it does not matter if you live next to the border with the Kaliningrad region, near the Belarusian border here in Poland, or [if] you live in Portugal, in Quebec, or anyplace today. You are being attacked. Russia has already attacked you.

VOA: Poland has experienced Belarusian helicopters entering its airspace. A Russian missile violated Poland’s airspace during an attack on Ukraine. Is Poland ready to do something about it?

Kosiniak-Kamysz: The situation of infringing the airspace of Poland also affects Latvia, often affecting Romania with UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), and we’ve prepared the air defense system. We also have enhanced air defense. We’re talking about Rzeszow Airport, which is almost being passed onto the protection of NATO. Our allies —America, Britain, Germany, Norway and other nations — are protecting us at the air base. And if that airspace is infringed, then the target missile or a drone can be shot [down]. … But it’s a different situation when it comes to shooting targets above the Ukrainian territory. There is no NATO decision on that position, or agreement to do so. We are protecting our territories.

VOA: Are you saying that if a rocket infiltrates Polish airspace, you’re ready to shoot them down?

Kosiniak-Kamysz: Very often, we activate our F-16s to act accordingly, if there is a danger to Polish territory, to defend our territory.

VOA: But it hasn’t happened yet?

Kosiniak-Kamysz: No, because there has been no such event where the missile would be aimed at a target in the Polish territory. But yes, last week, the Polish F-16s took off and were ready to protect near the border.

VOA: There are talks about the defense line you’re building on the eastern border called the “East Shield.” What are the plans for that for the next year or two?

Kosiniak-Kamysz: This is preparation for the event of a conflict on the Polish-Russian, Polish-Belarusian borders. We are building barriers that will complicate the movement of enemy troops. We are also building warehouses for artillery and other means of defense. We are building places for the defense of manpower. …. This should be combined with the Baltic line of defense, [and] strengthening the Russian-Finnish border. In addition, we are increasing protection against illegal migrants.

VOA: French President Emmanuel Macron visited Poland last week and hinted at the idea of Polish and French military personnel going to Ukraine as security guarantees if a peace agreement is signed. Poland declared it was not planning to do so. Why?

Kosiniak-Kamysz: We have not seen any peace plan from President Trump yet. There are many reports in the press about this or that outcome, following the example of Finland, or the example of Germany, but these are all speculations. We exclude the possibility of the Polish military being on the territory of Ukraine. We believe that such decisions should not be made by the group of countries, but NATO should have a key role in this decision. We will consider further steps when that stage comes. At this stage, as you said, we do not plan to send troops to Ukraine.

VOA: So, if NATO would make that decision, you’re open to it?

Kosiniak-Kamysz: Well, we’ll see. I won’t be making any declarations here. I’m just saying that we are not planning to deploy any troops to Ukraine, as long as the peace process has not been finalized, and that is not possible without Ukraine at the table. 
…

your ad here

Officials in Russia’s Rostov region reported a fire Thursday at an oil refinery after a wave of attacks from several dozen Ukrainian aerial drones.

Rostov acting Governor Yuri Slyusar said on Telegram that the fire happened at the Novoshakhtinsk refinery and was later extinguished. Slyusar reported one person was injured in the attack.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Thursday it destroyed 36 Ukrainian drones over Rostov, part of a total of 84 drones it shot down mostly over regions bordering Ukraine.

The ministry said the other intercepts took place over Bryansk, Belgorod, Voronezh, Kursk, Tambov and Krasnodar.

Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram that Ukrainian drone attacks damaged several residential buildings.

Ukraine’s military said Thursday its air defenses shot down 45 of 85 Russian drones used in overnight attacks targeting the Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi, Kirovohrad, Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Poltava and Sumy regions.

The military also said Russian missiles damaged residential buildings and municipal property in Dnipropetrovsk and Sumy.

Dnipropetrovsk Governor Serhiy Lysak said on Telegram that the areas damaged included a school and a hospital in Kryvyi Rih.

Some information for this story came from Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
…

your ad here

WASHINGTON — They were promised a chance to earn money, get an education abroad, and gain work experience. Instead, they found themselves assembling military drones in Russia and, in one case, subjected to a Ukrainian drone strike.

A series of investigative reports has shed light on a Russian labor recruitment program that has allegedly lured young African women to work at an industrial park in provincial Russia with false promises and coerced them into contributing to the Kremlin’s war effort in Ukraine.

The reported victims of the program, which attracts recruits largely through online job advertisements, includes women from Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria.

Media reports from The Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and others have exposed the operation, entitled Alabuga Start, but VOA reporting has found that African countries have largely failed to intervene or give an official response. Some even appear to be building ties with the Russian entity behind the program.

That entity called the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, has been intensifying its outreach across the African continent, according to David Albright, founder of the Institute for Science and International Security and the researcher behind a report exposing the program that exploited the young women. “In some of the initial investigations of this, the recruiters in Africa were oblivious when they were asked where these women were going,” Albright said, adding that some are now aware and that he hopes there will be “pushback from these governments about what exactly [Alabuga is] recruiting these women to do.”

Albright said representatives from Alabuga recently visited Sierra Leone, Zambia and Madagascar, signing memorandums of cooperation with local organizations, despite the reports of misleading recruitment practices and questionable labor actions.

Albright said the young women are forced to handle toxic materials, which he says is forbidden in Russian labor law. But African and other governments have also been willing to send their citizens off to Alabuga Start. VOA discovered a series of documents online indicating the government ministries had officially promoted the program.

VOA reached out to authorities of Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia and Nigeria but several emails and phone calls went unanswered. VOA also requested comment from Alabuga and the Russian Embassy in Washington but received no response.

Recruitment under false pretenses

Located 1,000 kilometers to the east of Moscow in Russia’s Tatarstan region, the city of Yelabuga, known as Alabuga in the local Tatar language, would hardly seem a desirable location for young people from Africa.

But the nearby Alabuga Special Economic Zone has been casting a wide net on the African continent. In promotional materials, it paints an exciting, optimistic picture of life in the Alabuga Start program.

In one recruitment video intended to appeal to potential recruits, an African woman arrives in Alabuga and begins work at a restaurant, where she waits on a young Russian man. At the end of the video, she returns to the restaurant as his pregnant wife.

Other promotional videos show participants working in construction, cleaning and warehouse operations, as well as studying and playing sports with their friends. Only one video features the women assembling drones, but no indication is given that the drones have a military purpose.

According to the Russian independent news outlet Protokol, the program has specifically targeted young women because its organizers believe young men from Africa “could be too aggressive and dangerous.”

Researchers and reporters found that some of the program’s internal documents, as reported by Albright and others, often referred to the women as mulattos using an outdated racial term that is now widely considered offensive.

Its appeal to African young people is not difficult to understand, says Maxim Matusevich, a Russia-Africa expert and a global history professor at Seton Hall University.

“A lot of these nations have very high unemployment rates,” he told VOA. Russia is “offering them attractively packaged and attractively sold job packages.”

Matusevich believes Alabuga Start aims to solve the problem of a shortfall of workers in Russia due to the heavy demand of the war in Ukraine.

Albright said that inaction has global ramifications: Alabuga Start is involving young Africans in Russian violence against Ukrainians.

“It’s been a very deceptive program in the sense that the applicants didn’t know they’d be working in essentially a U.S.- [and] European-sanctioned company making drones that are being used to devastating effect against Ukrainian civil targets, energy targets, electrical plants,” he told VOA.

“And so, in that sense, they’re complicit in a crime, an international crime, given that the war against Ukraine is illegal. They’re getting involved in making drones that are being used against civilian targets, not just military targets.”

Exploitation factory

Alabuga didn’t start out exploiting young African women. Before that, it used young Russians in drone production.

Since 2019, the special economic zone has operated a program called Alabuga Polytech, which recruits Russian high school students. Unlike workers from the African continent and other countries, the Russian students take part in a four-year work-study program, receiving accredited technical education while doing industrial work.

After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, that program ramped up its activity. It hasn’t been entirely smooth sailing. When the program pivoted to drone production, Alabuga had to lobby the Russian authorities to alter labor laws. According to a July report from the Institute for Science and International Security, that allowed Alabuga to hire children under the age of 18 to work with toxic chemicals.

Parents soon began to complain about the poor work conditions: Participants were working 12-hour factory shifts and their movements were strictly controlled, Albright recounted. He said the program has since stopped recruiting people younger than 18.

When the special economic zone launched Alabuga Start and began recruiting workers from abroad in 2022, the program was almost entirely focused on drone production.

According to estimates by Albright’s organization, only a third of Polytech students work on drone production, while over 90% of Alabuga Start participants do.

Despite that stark distinction, organizers appear to have frequently conflated the two programs, including by sometimes depicting Alabuga Start participants wearing school uniforms in promotional materials.

Multinational conveyer belt

Alabuga’s recent outreach to African nations signals a potential expansion of its recruitment efforts.

VOA found that African and other governments have at times been willing partners. Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Education shared on its website a document announcing open admissions to Alabuga Start in 2023.

Uganda’s Ministry of Education and Sport shared a similar announcement. In the document upload site Scribd, a digital document library, VOA found two files that appear to be official letters from the government ministries of Mali and Burkina Faso announcing that Alabuga Start had reserved spots for participants from those countries in 2023.

VOA also found a document by Bangladesh’s Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training announcing that applications were open for Alabuga Start in 2023.

The special economic zone’s many meetings with African diplomats and government officials, some of which included the signing of memoranda of understanding, appear to signal a deepening of ties.

Albright emphasizes that the special economic zone’s drone factory has been a linchpin of Russian-Iranian collaboration during the war against Ukraine.

“Alabuga is a special economic zone that basically builds and hires out or sells buildings for civilian industry,” he said. “With the war in Ukraine, their international occupants pulled out and they were desperate for money. And so, they made a contract with the Russian government and the Iranian government to build drones.”

The Alabuga factory in question primarily assembled the Shahed-136, an Iranian kamikaze drone.

In the first half of 2023, around 100 Alabuga Polytech students traveled to Tehran for two months of training in Shahed-136 airframe production, The Washington Post reported in August 2023.

Alabuga Start participants are largely used as low-skilled labor, assigned to complete the simplest tasks involved in assembling the airframes. A list of 100 Russian words that participants must know to take part in the program drives that conclusion home. It largely consists of basic vocabulary but also includes several higher-level words: “to hook,” “to unhook,” “factory,” and “task.”

The military nature of the work is largely absent from promotional materials for the program viewed by VOA. They typically show participants working in the service industry, construction, or non-military industrial production.

One brochure emphasizes that, after completing Alabuga Start, participants have the opportunity to continue working on a permanent basis, get a job at another Alabuga factory, or enroll in Polytech.

It also includes images that appear to show articles by the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal with headlines praising the factory and its salaries. In reality, the images have been edited to conceal the fact that both stories are about military drone production at the facility.

That work has placed African women in direct danger. On April 22, a Ukrainian drone crashed into the dormitory where Alabuga Start participants live.

A day later, Alabuga Start released a video featuring a Kenyan woman –– one of the program’s public-facing participants –– who said she would be going to work in a cafe. The participant notably said she had come to work and study at Alabuga Polytech — and not Start.

“Those who attacked our hostel today are real barbarians and they deserve serious condemnation,” she said. “In my opinion, they wanted to intimidate us. But I want to tell you they did not succeed. You won’t scare me, because Alabuga is a strong place and we will get through this.”

This story is a collaboration between VOA’s Africa Division and VOA’s Russian Service.
…

your ad here

BRUSSELS — NATO’s secretary-general said he wants to discuss ways to put Ukraine in a position of strength for any future peace talks with Russia during a meeting Wednesday with Ukraine’s president and a small number of European leaders.

But Mark Rutte appeared frustrated at growing speculation in NATO capitals about when those peace talks might start and whether European peacekeepers would be involved, saying that speaking publicly about it plays into the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“High on the agenda is to make sure that the president, his team in Ukraine, are in the best possible position one day when they decide to start the peace talks,” Rutte told reporters as he welcomed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to his residence in Brussels.

The focus, Rutte said, must be “to do everything now to make sure that when it comes to air defense, when it comes to other weapons systems, that we make sure that we provide whatever we can.”

He said that another issue up for discussion would be “how to make sure that when peace comes one day that we also think about the economy of Ukraine now, but also after a future peace deal.”

Zelenskyy posted on Telegram that he would hold talks with the leaders of the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands and Poland and U.K. representatives, who were in Brussels. He’s also due to take part in an EU summit in the Belgian capital on Thursday.

Zelenskyy said that the meeting would provide “a very good opportunity to speak about security guarantees for Ukraine, for today and for tomorrow.” Ukraine sees NATO membership as the ultimate security guarantee, but the U.S. and Germany lead a group of countries that oppose this while war continues.

After separate talks with Zelenskyy, French President Emmanuel Macron said his country is making reinforced support for Ukraine its ″absolute priority″ and will continue giving Ukraine ″the means to defend itself and to make Russia’s war of aggression fail,″ according to Macron’s office.

Noting his recent meeting with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Zelenskyy, Macron said he will maintain a ″tight dialogue with Ukraine and its international partners to work for a return to a fair and lasting peace,″ the statement said.

At NATO headquarters earlier, Rutte had said the terms of any peace talks should be up to Ukraine, Russia and any others at the negotiating table. “If we now start to discuss amongst ourselves what a deal could look like, we make it so easy for the Russians,” he said.

“I think we would be very wise to put some lid on this and focus on the business at hand, and the business at hand is to make sure that Ukraine has what it needs to prevent Putin from winning,” Rutte added.
…

your ad here