photo: PKP/PKP signed an agreement with the Territorial Defense Force. What is the purpose of this cooperation?
On 25 May 2022, Polish State Railways signed a cooperation agreement with the Territorial Defense Force (Wojska Obrony Terytorialnej, hereinafter WOT) to prepare WOT soldiers and PKP S.A. employees for coordinated cooperation in the introduction of combat readiness conditions and the state of readiness for national defence.
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In particular, the cooperation includes the organization of defence training for the protection and defence of railway infrastructure and railway station security, evacuation of people from the battle zones, disaster management and pre-hospital care for victims.
The agreement focuses on joint training in managing various types of crises and rail infrastructure and facility security (e.g., railroad security in case of sabotage and methods to prevent such acts).
"The agreement with the Territorial Defense Forces is an extremely important initiative, especially in light of Russia's aggression against Ukraine and the war going on for several months, right at our border. There is no doubt that efficient and safe rail transport is one of the elements that determine the country's security, and during a military crisis, it plays a crucial role. It was demonstrated by Ukrainian Railways evacuating refugees from threatened areas, providing army supplies and transporting humanitarian cargo. It is worth mentioning that it was railroads that marked out diplomatic corridors through which President Andrzej Duda, the Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, Deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński and many European and world politicians travelled to Kyiv. The importance of railroads in difficult times has also been proved by PKP Group companies, which engaged themselves, in various forms, in helping the Ukrainian citizens and state already in the first days of Russia's aggression against Ukraine," emphasizes Krzysztof Mamiński, President of the Management Board of Polskie Koleje Państwowe S.A.
"Today, the measure of our defence's strength is the state's resilience, which consists not only of the armed forces' actions. From the perspective of the conflict in Ukraine but also such of our history, we realize that Polish State Railways are a critical element of the state's resilience system. The element that determines the effectiveness of defence, but also the resilience of the community subjected to long-term external pressure, not only military. The Territorial Defense Forces were also created to strengthen the defence system and integrate the efforts of many institutions and civic initiatives that define state resilience. Therefore, for some time our cooperation has been accelerated, and further conditions of its development codified by an agreement on cooperation, which will define the framework and provide freedom of action for WOT units and PKP entities throughout the country," says Lieutenant General Wieslaw Kukuła, Commander of the Territorial Defense Forces.
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