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What did Poland's Afghanistan exit close out?
Summary
A look back at the final departure of Polish troops from Afghanistan, and at a Black Sea exercise that opened two days earlier.
What did it mean when the last Polish troops left Afghanistan on 30 June 2021? The departure ended Poland's involvement in the war there.
Around 33,000 Polish troops served in Afghanistan over the course of the war, and 44 of them were killed in action. Those figures frame the scale of a deployment that closed on that date.
For Kyiv and its neighbours, the same week carried a different kind of military news. On 28 June 2021, the Sea Breeze military exercises began in the Black Sea. As reported at the time, they were the largest in the history of the exercise.
Together, the two items mark a moment when one overseas commitment ended for Poland while a large exercise was under way in the waters south of Ukraine.
