Warsaw withdraws general
Polish Eurocorps commander under suspicion of espionage
March 27, 2024, 7:44 p.m
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Last summer, Polish Lieutenant General Jaroslaw Gromadzinski took over command of the European Corps in Strasbourg. Now the government in Warsaw is calling the top military back home. The reason is espionage investigations.
Poland has recalled the previous commander of the Eurocorps in Strasbourg, Lieutenant General Jaroslaw Gromadzinski, with immediate effect due to espionage investigations. As the Defense Ministry announced, “according to new information about the officer,” the services launched a “control investigation” into Jaroslaw Gromadzinski’s access to classified information. The general was ordered back to his home country.
There were initially no further details about the subject of the investigation. The top military officer told the Onet.pl portal that he had nothing to blame himself for, but did not want to comment on the ongoing investigation. Gromadzinski took over leadership of the Eurocorps in June 2023 – around a year and a half after Poland joined the multinational force with headquarters in Strasbourg as the sixth member. The 53-year-old succeeded the Belgian Peter Devogelaere.
Before joining the Eurocorps, Gromadzinski worked primarily as an advisor to the Chief of General Staff of the Polish Army. In recent months, as part of an international aid team for Ukraine in Wiesbaden, he was responsible for training Ukrainian soldiers alongside US soldiers.
The Eurocorps was created in 1993 on the initiative of then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl and French President François Mitterrand. Today, up to 60,000 soldiers from Germany, France, Belgium, Spain, Luxembourg and Poland can be subordinate to him. The main task is the management and coordination of large international military operations. Greece, Italy, Romania, Turkey and Austria are involved as so-called associated nations. The Eurocorps is operational for both NATO and the European Union.