Too few volunteers to create planned “Ukrainian Legion” in Poland, says defence minister

Poland’s defence minister says that too few volunteers have so far signed up to form a planned “Ukrainian Legion” made up of Ukrainians living in Poland, who would be trained and then sent to help defend their homeland.

The idea of creating such a legion was formally announced in July, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Warsaw to sign a bilateral security agreement with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

Shortly afterwards, Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, said that “several thousand” Ukrainians in Poland “have already registered” to join the legion. That caused some surprise because no formal recruitment process had yet been launched. Subsequently, there have been no further developments.

During an interview with news website Wirtualna Polska today, defence minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz was asked about the progress in forming a Ukrainian Legion.

He said that Poland is responsible for “preparing and training” the recruits and “we have been ready [to do this] since the start of September”.

However, “we are not responsible for recruitment”, which is conducted by Ukraine. “I think the number of people who were supposed to sign up from the Ukrainian side is too small.”

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“The [initial] Ukrainian declarations were very high [and indicated] that there would be [enough volunteers] to form a brigade, that is a few thousand people,” said Kosiniak-Kamysz. “But there are not that many willing people.”

“This is a matter for Ukraine, in the sense that Poland will not take part in the recruitment process,” he added. The minister also noted that Poland has so far trained over 20,000 personnel from Ukraine’s armed forces, more than any other EU country.

In response to Kosiniak-Kamysz’s remarks, Tatiana Kolesnychenko, a journalist at Wirtualna Polska focused on Ukraine, said they had “astonished Kyiv” because “Ukraine has not yet officially announced the start of recruitment and there has been no information campaign”.

Last month, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, a leading Polish newspaper, reported, based on unnamed sources, that Sikorski had been “misled” by Ukraine about the allegedly high interest among Ukrainians to volunteer for the legion.

Shortly afterwards, Sikorski called for European countries to end social benefits for military-age Ukrainian men, saying they should not be rewarded for avoiding the draft.

In his interview today with Wirtualna Polska, Kosiniak-Kamysz likewise said that it “evokes a lot of emotions in Polish society” when people see “young men speaking Ukrainian who have not signed up” for military service.

According to government figures, there are just under 1 million Ukrainian refugees in Poland. Jakub Dudziak, spokesman for the government’s Office for Foreigners, noted earlier this year that around half the refugees are children and that, among the adults, three quarters are women.

There are also several hundred thousand Ukrainians living in Poland as economic immigrants, many of whom have been there since before Russia’s invasion of their homeland.

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.