Poland To Build Border Posts To Counter "Russian Threats"

(Vatican Radio) Poland says it will build observation towers along its land border with the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad after Russia deployed missiles there. The Polish move comes amid concerns in neighboring countries over what they perceive as Russia's military threats after it already backed Russian separatists in Ukraine and annexed the Crimean Peninsula there. 

Listen to the report by correspondent Stefan Bos: 

Poland's six towers will be up to 50 meters high and will stream images to Polish guards monitoring the tense 200 kilometer border with the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

Most of the reported $3.8 million necessary to fund the project will come from the European Union.

Polish officials believe the country has no other option than to build the towers after Russia reportedly stationed short-range Iskander missiles across the border.

Russia decided to move the missiles amid heightened tensions with the West and the NATO military alliance over Ukraine, where Russian backed separatists fight government forces.

NATO ALLIANCE

Poland receives support from the NATO military alliance: American armored vehicles have rumbled through Poland and other countries near the border with Russia in recent weeks on a mission to reassure citizens that they're safe from Russian aggression.

At the same time ordinary people aren't taken any chances.

In Poland, doctors, shopkeepers, lawmakers and others are heeding a call to receive military training in case of an invasion.

Neighboring Lithuania is even restoring the draft and teaching citizens what to do in case of war, explains President Dalia Grybauskaite. 

"We had conscription before 2008 and we thought that it would be never necessary," she said. "But with the changing geopolitical situation around our borders

we realized that the threats are very real for all our region all our Baltic states and our neighborhood became even less predictable and Russia became more aggressive."

NATO MEMBER 

The president stressed that "The reality of our lives says that as NATO members we first need to be able to guarantee defense of our nation ourselves and only then apply to our partners for help if necessary."

And just as Poland, Lithuania anxiously watches Russia's military operations in the nearby Kaliningrad  enclave, explained the president. "We have the border with Russia directly, the Kaliningrad region, in which we do see increased military activities even with tactical weapons and threats and exercises practically every day," Grybauskaite complained.

"And we see dangerous activists in the Baltic Sea and Russian flights, Russian bombardments [cable aircraft], flying without identification. That is stressful for all civil aviation in the Baltics," she added.     

Nearby Latvia has plans to give university students military training next year.

Analysts say the drive to teach ordinary people how to use weapons and take cover under fire reflects soaring anxiety among residents in a region which only shrugged of Moscow's domination in the early 1990s.

People say they worry that their security and hard-won independence from what was the Soviet Union is threatened once again as pro-Russian separatists fight in a now one-year insurgency in Ukraine which already killed more than 6,000 people.