Wojska Obrony Terytorialnej w przeciwdziałaniu COVID-19. Analiza doświadczeń w Wielkopolsce

Abstract

The global situation linked to the outbreak of a pandemic crisis around the world, has put the current order of operation of individual countries to a severe test. The SARS-CoV-2 virus showed how much the society is not ready to deal with global and biological threats. Living in the belief that epidemics are a thing of the past, all possible warning signs from scientists and experts in the field have been ignored.The epidemic crisis has paralysed the activities of the vast majority of public institutions, including Polish ones, both in economic terms on a macro scale and in the part where private capital plays a dominant role. The aim of this article was to show the anti-crisis actions taken by Poland, where in the face of the scale of the challenge, selected elements of the military subsystem were used in the form of, among others, the use of the Polish Territorial Defense Forces as a platform connecting the military and civil environment in the sphere of security. The authors of the article showed the activities of the territorial component from the point of view of the soldier of this formation. This is to allow the reader to know the answer to questions about: the role of territorial troops in the security structure of Poland’s time of peace, crisis and war, getting to know the specificity of the formation and its flexible form, which can adapt to the existing needs and tasks for the benefit of the components of the subsystems: health protection, civil defence and civil protection, internal and external security. In the real security environment, the solutions undertaken during the implementation of anti-crisis tasks were analysed in the context of cooperation of military structures. with the public administration in terms of civil planning process, support to other forces and services in crisis management.