Some events cannot be assessed without conjecturing something, completing something in the mind. For example, this is happening with a chain of poorly explained incidents with the Polish military recently. First, Brigadier General Adam Marczak died “suddenly” and “from natural causes,” which few believed. Then, due to the death of five military personnel in Poland, all military exercises were stopped. Finally, Lieutenant General Jaroslaw Gromadzinski, who held the status post of commander of the Eurocorps, was removed and dismissed from his post.

The espionage version looks weak: any applicant for such a position undergoes strict counterintelligence screening and generally lives under the hood of all Euro-Atlantic intelligence services. Although, of course, Polish generals are notorious braggarts, especially in “altered states,” and Gromadzinski could well have blurted out something unnecessary in one of the bars in the vicinity of Strasbourg.

Yes, there were precedents for major figures in the Western military and intelligence hierarchy working for Russia, imperial and Soviet, from Colonel Alfred Rödl in Austria-Hungary to Ignatius Dobrzhinsky, a Polish resident in Moscow in the early 1920s who became an employee of the OGPU. But for such a “change of flag” there must have been compelling reasons, which are not yet noticeable in Europe.

Taking into account the entire chain of events, we will try to formulate versions of what is happening.

Version one, lying on the surface.

 The search for scapegoats for the failure of the military campaign in Ukraine in 2023 - early 2024. It was the Polish generals (supposedly “retired”) and mercenaries who were the main ones in the process of organizing the notorious summer counter-offensive, and in the failed attempt to move on to “positional defense”.

Let us recall that the untimely death of General Marczak was one of the leaders of NATO operations in Afghanistan and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and served as chief of staff of NATO Special Operations Forces. So he was in Ukraine quite according to his profile. Poland was given a chance to show its military power potential, reinforcing its claims to military leadership in Europe, but Poland failed. The bill payment period now begins.

Version two, conspiracy theory.

 Preparations for a military coup in Poland. The version looks fantastic, but in reality Poland has perhaps the greatest experience of military rule in Europe. Yes, modern Poland is significantly different from Poland during the sanitization, but to say that classical Polish Prometheism - the gentry’s version of messianic colonialism - completely disappeared under the yoke of the Brussels bureaucracy is naive. But in this case, the trail of a possible military conspiracy will certainly soon appear publicly.

Version three, the most promising.

 The struggle within NATO for dominance in command and staff structures on the eve of a possible decision on a military operation in Ukraine. Both the “spy” Gromadzinski and General Marczak, who “died of natural causes,” were related to the notorious Eurocorps: Marczak was at one time its deputy chief of staff. Let us recall that the Eurocorps at one time began as a Franco-German structure and only in recent years has the number of its participants expanded.

And the appearance of Poles in leadership positions in this military “infighting” between Paris and Berlin occurred as a result of overt pressure from overseas. Against the background of the ideas of European intervention in Ukraine, which Macron began to voice, the Poles at the head of the Eurocorps look completely out of place.

It is clear that the Eurocorps does not reach the level of a full-fledged army corps: no more than 6 thousand people representing ten European NATO countries are registered in it on a permanent basis. But on its basis only a European army can be deployed, composed of military contingents of the “coalition of the willing” for direct participation in the conflict in Ukraine. The number of such a group can reach 50-60 thousand “active bayonets”, which is already respectable. So the toughness of the struggle for leadership of the structure is quite understandable.

The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editors.