Soldier duties as a form of shaping the ethos of military service

Abstract

The war which broke out on February 24, 2022, as a result of the military aggression of Russian Federation against Ukraine once again shattered the state of relative peace in Europe and reevaluated the perception of threats, shifting focus from non-military threats to military ones. Thus, the issue of the readiness of the state, including the readiness of its military forces acting as its armed wing, for another potential military conflict came to the forefront of all discussions conducted in the political, scientific and social world. Events on the international arena coincided with measures undertaken as part of the Ministry of National Defence. These consist primarily in increasing the number of soldiers in the Polish Army (ultimately up to 300,000 soldiers), increasing combat capacity through modernisation and purchasing modern armament, as well as improving combat capabilities, as assumed by the Development Program of the Armed Forces for 2017-2026. It is worth noticing that the process focuses not only on supplying the army with modern equipment, but also on shaping in soldiers those features that will be useful both in peacetime and in wartime. What is meant here is soldier duties understood as fulfilment of a certain moral obligations to the Homeland, nation, as well as both military and civil environment. Duties can also be understood in the context of a specific vocation, mission, or responsibility to be fulfilled towards those who established a particular entity, in this case the Polish Army, to fulfil tasks prescribed by law and put their trust in them. In the course of the research, the soldier duties which are relevant to the process of building the ethos of military service and the way in which these duties should be shaped were identified.