Poland, the largest country on NATO's eastern flank and a neighbour of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, is the western alliance's largest spender in relative terms.

This year, the country is allocating 4.8% of its GDP to defence, just shy of the alliance's five percent target to be met by 2035.

However, that record defence spending was not enough to "make up for nearly three decades of chronic underfunding of the armed forces," General Wieslaw Kukula, chief of the general staff, argued at the meeting, which included top officers, the defence minister and Poland's president.

The general highlighted a low "pace of technical modernisation", compared to increases in the army's size.

Kukula said the Polish army should reach 500,000 soldiers by 2039, compared with around 210,000 at present.

As a result of a lack of updates, some new Polish units "are not achieving combat readiness," due to insufficient equipment, rather than a personnel shortage, the general argued.

Meanwhile, he added, "the Russian Federation remains an existential threat to Poland".

Russia "is constantly reorganizing its forces, drawing on the lessons from its aggression in Ukraine, and building up the capacity for a conventional conflict with NATO countries," he stressed.

Poland is to receive 43.7 billion euros ($51,5 billion) in loans under the European Union's Security Action For Europe (SAFE) scheme, designed to strengthen Europe's defensive capabilities.

Warsaw plans to use these funds to boost domestic arms production.

The Polish government claims that Poland will be able to access SAFE finance even if President Karol Nawrocki -- backed by Poland's conservative-nationalist opposition -- vetos a law setting out domestic arrangements for its implementation.

Law and Justice (PiS) -- the main opposition party -- argues that SAFE could become a new tool for Brussels to place undue pressure on Poland, thanks to a planned mechanism for monitoring the funds, which they claim risks undermining Polish sovereignty.