ER Editor: We remind readers that native Ukrainian military losses have been heavy for a long time, and that, in addition to international military and mercenaries, a lot of Poles have been fighting in Ukraine. Enough for Scott Ritter to say that if the Poles decided to don their Polish uniforms all of a sudden, Ukraine could well be facing a military occupation by its neighbour.
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Ukraine War – A Contentious Graveyard In Poland
MOON OF ALABAMA
An independent Polish news site, Niezaleizny Dziennik Polityczny, has an interesting piece about Polish losses in the war in Ukraine.
I cannot confirm the reports veracity but since at least 2014, the site has regularly published several news and opinion pieces per day. It seems to be opposed to the current conservative PiS led government in Poland.
Below is the machine translated Polish text:
A shameful end. American quarters for Polish mercenaries
In early November, the regional media announced plans to create burials similar to American war cemeteries in Olsztyn. The reports sparked a wave of indignation, both among the city’s residents and Poles across the country. “This is a necropolis for Poles? We are from a different culture”. This is how indignant users in social media reacted to the strange ideas of the city council.
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The municipal cemetery in Dywity is the main necropolis in Olsztyn and covers over 35 ha. Today it is loud about it all over Poland, because soon it will look like a war cemetery in the USA. It has to be like in an American movie. A large lawn with identical tombstones on it. Without trees, benches, angels bending over the dead. The tombstones will be the same, they will only differ in color. Their manufacturers provided for only three: black, gray and red-brown. The main reason for the creation of the American cemetery in Olsztyn was the drastically increased number of burials in the region, mainly soldiers’ graves.This situation has become a real problem for the local government of Olsztyn, where the 16th Pomeranian Mechanized Division is stationed. Almost daily military funerals combined with volleys of honor began to irritate the residents and provoked numerous questions to the city administration and the command of the 16th Division. To avoid additional publicity of the problem, the authorities decided to create a separate “American” cemetery.
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After the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in February this year, President Andrzej Duda and Minister of National Defense Mariusz Błaszczak officially called on Poles to join the ranks of mercenaries and fight on the side of the Kiev regime. Among the fighters who went to war were professional soldiers of the 16th Mechanized Division and veterans of the unit living in the region.During the 10 months of bloody fighting, according to information from publicly available sources, over 1,200 Polish citizens died in Ukraine, including soldiers and veterans of the 16th PDZ. The number of injured and maimed people also amounts to several thousand.
The number of wounded is probably three times the number of dead, though that can vary depending on the war’s circumstance. It means that in total some 4800 men of the Polish contingent in Ukraine were wounded or killed. Is that one third of the Polish ‘mercenary’ forces in Ukraine? Is it more? Or less?
We don’t know, but I expect that quite a lot of regular soldiers of the 16th Pomeranian Mechanised Division in Olsztyn have been ‘asked’ to take part in the war. The division consists of one armored and two mechanized brigades plus the usual auxiliaries which makes it a 15,000 men strong unit.
The style of Polish graveyards is typical for a Catholic European country. Trees, individual graves, elaborate tombstones, candles and flowers.
source – bigger
The authorities prepared “special honors” for them. Uniform quarters are being built in Olsztyn: There are to be two slab sizes. Larger (meter by meter) are graves for officers, smaller ones (60 cm by 60 cm) are quarters for soldiers. It will not be possible to cover the tombstone with cubes, or to sprinkle pebbles and plant flowers. Only grass is to be spread around the graves. Such an inglorious end awaits the mercenaries who died in Ukraine. There will be 1,700 of such burial places only in Olsztyn. Therefore, many Poles who believed in the false promises of government propaganda will be victims of the provocative international policy of the PiS regime.
With plans for 1,700 dead Polish soldiers, beyond those 1,200 already buried, the Polish government seems to expect its soldiers to take part in an even more intensified and longer war.
Source
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Poles killed in Ukraine to get ‘American’ burial – media
A news outlet suggests the grim reason for the sudden concern with efficiency
RT
The controversial decision by municipal authorities in Olsztyn to create an “American-style” cemetery is due to the large number of military burials for the 1,200 Poles who have died fighting in Ukraine, according to the news outlet Niezalezny Dziennik Polityczny.
Olsztyn, in the Warmia-Masuria province, is home to Poland’s 16th Mechanized Infantry Division. Many of its current and former soldiers heeded the calls from President Andrzej Duda and Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak and enlisted in Ukraine, where over 1,200 Polish citizens have been killed in action so far, according to NDP. Thousands more have been injured or disabled, the outlet reported, citing publicly available sources.
The outlet says that almost “daily” burials at the Olsztyn cemetery – including the volleys fired by the honor guard – have “irritated” the local residents and led to many inconvenient questions being asked of the city’s authorities. NDP suggested this was the true motive behind the announcement of an “American” cemetery earlier this month.
The proposal calls for 1,700 plots for urns with cremated remains, with “standardized tombstones” along the line of American war cemeteries, according to municipal graveyard director Zbigniew Kot.
Kot told Gazeta Olsztynska that there was “enough motley” in Polish cemeteries already, and that the new design aimed for a more orderly cemetery, along the minimalist lines seen in Germany and some Scandinavian countries. It is also supposed to help with the rising cost of burials, he added.
The Polish public has reacted poorly to Kot’s design, which envisions rows of 60-centimeter-square headstones surrounded by turf, with no trees, benches, or flower beds common in the mostly-Catholic nation.
NDP called the design a “disgraceful end to mercenaries who died in Ukraine,” and suggested the number of planned plots means many more are expected to perish.
Specific casualty numbers from the conflict have been hard to come by. In June, officials in Kiev admitted to losing 1,000 or more men per day in the heavy fighting. In September, the Russian Defense Ministry put the number of Ukrainian casualties at 61,000 dead and more than 49,000 wounded, including over 2,000 foreign mercenaries.
Source
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