Challenges to national defence in contemporary geopolitical situation

Important role in the implementation of a proactive approach represents operations dedicated to elimination of weapons of mass destruction. It is obvious that if trained and adequately equipped military forces carried out an operation to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, it significantly reduces the need to organize extensive CBRN defence measures for military forces or protection of civilians. Measures to implement the tasks of defence against weapons of mass destruction (CBRN defence) recently change. The security environment influences the perception and attitude of the Alliance to address global problems associated with state or non-state ownership of weapons of mass destruction. The focus of the Chemical Corps is gradually expanding from the current passive (reactive) approach to proactive approach.

This study is focused on the construction and analysis of a complex epidemiological practical model built on the basis of the Susceptible-Infected-Removed (SIR) model. The examples illustrate the behavior of the practical model in various scenarios and also compare this model and a similar model, taking into account migration. The nature of the behavior of the model is determined by parameters such as the rate of spread of infection, the coefficients of recovery, mortality, the intergroup transition and others with different values of influence.

Contemporary studies show that military power depends not only on manpower, weapons, or resources, but in many cases, success on the battlefield is determined by the potential of human capital, including knowledge, skills, competences, and other capacities [1; 2]. Using a cost-based approach, the author focuses on the input side assessing military human capital potential in the context of defence expenditure – economic development nexus in the Baltic countries, such as Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. The investigation covers the period between 2004 and 2020. Defence expenditure on personnel has been used as a proxy for military human capital potential, and real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita as a proxy for economic development. Research is carried out using econometric methods, including Spearman’s correlation analysis and Automatic Linear Modelling (ALM). The research results reveal that investments in military personnel have significant and positive impact on economic development in the Baltic states. Defence expenditure on personnel explains 63.7 percent of variation in real GDP per capita in Lithuania, 71.3 percent in Latvia, and 63.4 percent in Estonia. The author hopes that the findings of the investigation will extend the scope of research across the Baltic States and will be useful for the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 8, economic g rowth).

The protection of cultural heritage is seen as an important element of a country’s cultural policy. The article describes the nature of the threats posed by Russian aggression on Ukrainian cultural heritage and the destruction of cultural property. The article was aimed at highlighting the consequences of Russia’s deliberate destruction of Ukrainian cultural heritage and an interdisciplinary look at its value and protection during the contemporary armed conflict. This assessment can serve as a starting point for a discussion on the challenges related to the protection of cultural heritage during a potential armed conflict in Central and Eastern Europe. Drawing on practical examples of Ukraine, solutions were proposed to improve the protection of cultural heritage in Poland.

Ensuring the quality of the various processes is essential to the effective functioning of an organisation. One way to achieve this is to assess the quality of the organisation’s performance. This process involves both self-assessment and external evaluation, which are carried out using different methodological approaches to evaluation. It should be stressed that the outcome of the quality assessment also depends on the choice of a methodological approach and its correct use from a methodological perspective. The aim of this paper is to present methodological approaches to assessing the quality of organisational performance. The paper focuses on action research as a methodological approach to evaluation and case studies as a methodological approach to external evaluation, showing how the two are closely interrelated and how they can be used more frequently and successfully in quality management research.

The article deals with the issue of the energy efficiency in military camps. The military camps are mostly built during military deployments in case of exercises or missions. As different kinds of temporary structures are typically used to shelter large part of the camps’ facilities, the area of improvement for better energy efficiency lies mainly in the utilization of energy efficient devices, machines and pieces of equipment that are used by deployed personnel. The resulting lower energy consumption does not only bring lower financial and logistical burden to the military units but also contribute to the lower environmental impact of military activities. And ultimately, lowering energy use, especially fossil fuel, may result in cleaner environment and significantly affect health of deployed personnel. Overall, there are many benefits brought by energy efficient devices and equipment in several overlapped areas in military camps and their surroundings.

The relevance and necessity of the implementation and use of geoinformation systems for military purposes is due to the general increase in the requirements of the troops (forces) for the efficiency, completeness and quality of the information support of the management process. The armed aggression of the Russian federation against Ukraine creates new challenges to the state’s information security and necessitates a review of the requirements for information support in general and for geoinformation support in particular.

The regional and local impacts of the restrictive measures taken to mitigate the covid-19 crisis are highly heterogeneous and have significant consequences for the efficiency of society’s functioning, the emergency management of the state administration, and the political responses of the governing parties. The paper deals with the assessment of threats and risks resulting from the restrictive measures of the government as part of the solution to the pandemic crisis situation in the Czech Republic (CR). The aim of the authors is to identify the most serious threats and risks that can affect the democracy and internal security of the CR during a pandemic and to propose recommendations for their mitigation. To assess the defined threats and risks, a point semi-quantitative method was used, working with values for probability, impact and the opinion of evaluators, called the PCE method (Probability, Consequences, Evaluator). Out of the twenty assessed threats, a group of evaluators identified the eight most serious ones, using the PCE method.

As a part of Western sanctions against Russia, big social media companies i.e., Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, have been limiting their functionalities available to Russians and suspending and limiting reach of Russian influencers. Many Russian propagandist, aware of the risk of becoming deplatformed, were already looking for social media platforms with less moderation before the February 24th. With many Russians using Telegram as their preferred communicator, Telegram became the natural choice. Russian government, by blocking access to Western social media platforms by Russian users and by directing state influencers to migrate their domestic audiences to Telegram, has accelerated this trend. Despite many advantages, Telegram is limited in ease with which new content and channels can be discovered. Telegram search for channels is based on exact string matching and Telegram has no content search or content recommendation functionality built into it. Telegram’s advertising mechanism is still in its infancy. To enable quick growth of the key state propaganda channels, Russians employed several tactics. They have selected a few existing influencers, such as Vladimir Soloviev, to substitute for the absent search and recommendation engine. Soloviev’s Telegram channels has been heavily advertised on legacy media, starting with TV stations carrying his programs, to serve as an onramp to Telegram. Soloviev has regularly featured reviews of other smaller channels, endorsing, and promoting their pro-conflict content, becoming the missing recommendation engine for Russians. All the above resulted in creating a vast, Telegram-based apparatus of domestic state propaganda. In this paper, we trace the growth of Russian pro-conflict Telegram communities and quantify the impact of centralized endorsement by state influencers on the growth of other smaller, specialized Telegram channels.

The aggression on Ukraine in 2022 was preceded by hybrid attacks targeting many European countries, including Poland. An important element of the hybrid attack are disinformation and propaganda activities. The aim of the article is to interpret the results of research on the vulnerability of Poles to disinformation depending on how far we are from the place where the inflammatory events take place. The study concerned disinformation about illegal migration to Poland from Belarus in 2021. The surveyed were residents of areas neigh boring with Belarus and in other statistically selected regions of Poland.