Poland Kicks Off Unprecedented Military Spending Spree

Warsaw (AFP) - Looking east to the bloody conflict gripping Ukraine, NATO-member Poland has kicked off an unprecedented military spending spree worth billions to overhaul its forces as Warsaw believes peace in Europe is no longer a given.

The escalation of tensions with Russia over its annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula and subsequent role in the crisis in that country's east has sounded the alarm on NATO's eastern flank in countries that were under Moscow's thumb during the Cold War.

Russia has also rattled its neighbours by repeatedly testing their air defences. NATO intercepted nuclear-capable Russian bombers and other warplanes in European airspace on more than 100 occasions last year, three times more than in 2013.

Even though a Ukraine ceasefire deal was hammered out this past week in Minsk by Paris, Berlin, Moscow and Kiev, the risk of the conflict heating up remains, Polish officials believe.

"The key to a political and military solution lies in Moscow," Poland's President Bronislaw Komorowski told reporters Thursday in Warsaw.

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