From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   At Risk of Invasion or Lovely to Visit: Two Views of a Polish Border Area   
   By Andrew Higgins, Reporting from Suwalki, Poland, and Lithuania   
   Aug. 22, 2023, New York Times   
      
   With election day drawing nearer, the government has been amplifying its   
   warnings. Poland’s most-watched television channel, TVP, which is controlled   
   by the governing party, gives updates most days on threats emanating from   
   Kaliningrad and Belarus,    
   particularly since the arrival there of some Wagner mercenaries.   
      
   Several retired Polish generals have questioned insistent claims that Wagner   
   fighters in Belarus pose a serious threat and whether they are anywhere near   
   the Polish border. (Some reports say they have mostly left Belarus.) A senior   
   Lithuanian military    
   official, who asked not to be named so that he could give his views frankly,   
   said: “There is really no such threat, but being politically correct I must   
   remain silent.”   
      
   Others question whether the whole concept of the Suwalki Gap has any validity   
   now that there are thousands of British, German and other NATO troops   
   stationed in the Baltic States and the alliance has expanded to include   
   Finland, and should soon also    
   admit Sweden. This northward expansion of the alliance means that Russia can   
   no longer cut off Baltic States from the rest of NATO simply by closing the   
   Suwalki Gap.   
      
   “The whole picture has changed,” said Col. Peter Nielsen, the Danish   
   commander of the NATO Forces Integration Unit in Lithuania, which coordinates   
   between NATO, the local military command and some 2,500 German and other   
   alliance troops currently in    
   the country.   
      
   “Kaliningrad is now a real problem for Russia, and not as much a pain in the   
   neck for NATO,” he added.   
      
   Jacek Niedzwiecki, an opposition candidate for Parliament in the October   
   election and the deputy head of Suwalki’s town council, accused Law and   
   Justice officials of ginning up a fake crisis to shore up support and tar its   
   opponents as weak on defense.   
      
   All the talk of danger, he said, “is a political show,” but is having   
   real-life consequences. Mr. Niedzwiecki helped organize an international   
   badminton competition in Suwalki this summer and was dismayed when foreign   
   teams asked whether it was safe    
   to visit.   
      
   “We have a beautiful sports hall, but all people were asking about was the   
   damn Suwalki Gap,” he said. Assured there was no risk of conflict, all the   
   24 national teams invited to attend decided to compete.   
      
   After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, Daniel   
   Domoradzki, a lawyer who heads Active Masuria, a regional residents’ group,   
   worried that “we might be next because we are so close to Kaliningrad,”   
   and asked authorities to    
   provide information about functioning bomb shelters in the Suwalki Gap. He   
   received no answer.   
      
   He said his group’s main concern these days is improving bus services, not a   
   coming war with Belarus and or Russia, though “with a madman like Putin in   
   power, you never know what could happen.”   
      
   Of one thing, however, he is certain: “I hate election campaigns. Politics   
   used to be about exchanging arguments about real problems. Now it is just   
   about playing on emotions.”   
      
   https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/22/world/europe/poland-suwalki-r   
   ssia-belarus.html   
      
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