BERLIN: Germany has said it will send a group of soldiers to Poland to help with a project to fortify the country’s eastern border as worries mount about the threat from Russia.
Poland, a strong supporter of Ukraine in its fight against Moscow, announced plans in May last year to bolster a long stretch of its border that includes Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
The main task of the German soldiers in Poland will be “engineering activities,” a spokesman for the defense ministry in Berlin said late Friday.
This could include “constructing fortifications, digging trenches, laying barbed wire, or erecting tank barriers,” he said.
“The support provided by German soldiers as part of (the operation) is limited to these engineering activities.”
The spokesman did not specify the exact number of troops involved, saying only it would be a “mid-range two-digit number.”
They are expected to participate in the project from the second quarter of 2026 until the end of 2027.
The spokesman stressed that parliamentary approval was not needed for the deployment as “there is no immediate danger to the soldiers from military conflicts.”
Except for certain exceptional cases, the German parliament has to approve the deployment of the country’s armed forces overseas.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Warsaw has staunchly backed Kyiv and been a transit route for arms being supplied by Ukraine’s Western allies.
Warsaw has also modernized its army and hiked defense spending.
Germany is Ukraine’s second-biggest supplier of military aid after the United States and has sent Kyiv a huge quantity of equipment ranging from air defense systems to armored vehicles.