“During our rule, the number of the Polish army has exceeded 200,000 people,” Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defense Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said at a press conference. The Rzeczpospolita newspaper writes about this.
The minister said that Poland’s defense spending is now at a record high. He recalled that in 2023, defense spending amounted to 137.1 billion zlotys (about $ 35 billion), while in 2024 it increased to 158.8 billion zlotys ($40 billion), and in 2025 it will grow to 186.6 billion zlotys (47 billion dollars). The Deputy Prime Minister stressed that these are expenses both from the budget and from the fund for the provision of the Armed Forces.
Kosiniak-Kamysz stated that 2024 is the year of record spending on the army: 4.2% of GDP (no NATO country has reached such a level of defense spending). Military spending is expected to reach 4.7% of GDP in 2025.
According to him, the Polish army is now the third largest in NATO, “we have already overtaken France,” Kosiniak—Kamysz noted. Now the Polish army is about 205 thousand people, and by the end of the year it is expected that it will reach 207.5 thousand. Only the United States and Turkey have large troops in NATO.
