| Submit your comments on this article |
| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Ukraine continues to warn Poland about the impending deterioration in relations |
| 2023-08-08 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Stanislav Stremidlovsky [REGNUM] After the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky called for the sake of reducing the diplomatic escalation between Kiev and Warsaw not to allow “ no political moments to spoil relations between the Ukrainian and Polish peoples ” and asked to cool emotions, adviser to the head of his office Mikhail Podolyak gave new food to warm up disputes. Speaking on the FREEDOM TV channel, Podolyak said that "after the end of the war, we will, of course, have competitive relations, of course, we will compete for certain markets, consumer markets, and so on." And he added that Kyiv would definitely remain on a pro-Ukrainian position and firmly defend its interests in relation to Poland and any other country. By and large, the adviser to the head of the office of the President of Ukraine did not say anything new, which was not previously said in Poland itself. As the Polish magazine Do Rzeczy wrote following the results of the July NATO summit, it is unlikely that the Polish-Ukrainian "friendship" will stand the test of time in the future. Ukraine will become Poland's main competitor in the West, since Kyiv will focus not so much on Warsaw as on Western European capitals. “Poland has achieved its grandiose successes over the past thirty years, of course, unintentionally, largely at the expense of Ukraine ,” the publication stated. Suffice it to recall that the Polish GDP over the past 30 years has grown more than five times, while the Ukrainian GDP over the same period is still at the 1991 level. At the same time, Ukrainians have great advantages. Cheap labor, cheap energy, less fragmented agriculture.” So Podolyak just repeated these theses, only not in political Polish, but in political Ukrainian. However, in Poland, some politicians and publications took the statements of the adviser to the head of the office of the President of Ukraine rather emotionally. “Thank you for your honesty,” Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, a member of the European Parliament from the ruling Polish Law and Justice Party (PiS), reacted caustically . “Ukraine is barely alive, and the guy representing the President of Ukraine is saying such terribly stupid things,” Jacek Lensky, a journalist for the pro-government television channel TVP, said. “ Ukrainians I know grab their heads.” “This is how the Neopilsud dreams of “Jagiellonian Poland” and the Lower Sea end,” commented Professor Adam Velomsky . On the whole, however, Podolyak touched on a topic that - unlike Ukrainian grain and Polish farmers - will be harder for Warsaw to fight off. At one time, Polish propagandists picked up the thesis of the Kyiv regime that, in conflict with Russia, it protects all of Europe from the “Russian threat”. This means that now Poland should be a priori “thankful” to Ukraine for solving the problems of Polish security and not criticize it. Another thing is not clear: why did the adviser to the office of the President of Ukraine talk so confidently about Polish-Ukrainian relations in the context of European politics. Poland is a country that is a member of the European Union and NATO, where Ukraine seems to want to join. If the "indestructible friendship" between the Polish and Ukrainian peoples, according to Podolyak, will crack in the future, then what sense will Warsaw see in supporting the European and Euro-Atlantic aspirations of the Kyiv regime? Perhaps the fact is that in Kiev they carefully listened to the words of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who recently warned that Poland was preparing an operation to enter Western Ukraine. “The ideas of introducing certain Polish units are being thrown around ” and “ if this happens, this will be the beginning of the path of tearing away the western territories of Ukraine in favor of Poland,” Putin said. As one of the Slovak publications noted the other day, among other things, the tension on the Warsaw-Kyiv line is provoked by "Poland's great-power ambitions, manifested in the Poles' sounding out thoughts about creating a confederation in which it would dominate in the Baltic states and Ukraine" and "the creation of an excessively powerful and ambitious Polish army, which causes mixed feelings in the circles of the Ukrainian generals.” In this situation, Podolyak's speech could serve two purposes. Firstly, he tried to dispel the fears of Ukrainians who were concerned about too close rapprochement between Warsaw and Kiev during the current military operation and Poland's initiatives to implement its own economic and other projects in Ukraine with the prospect of absorbing Western Ukraine. Secondly, an adviser to the head of the office of the President of Ukraine conveyed a message to Warsaw itself, from where over the past year there have been “optimistic” arguments about Polish-Ukrainian integration up to the creation of a kind of confederal state. The Kiev regime does not see Poland in conflict with the leading European decision-making centers, an obligatory participant in peace negotiations to resolve the Ukrainian crisis and build a new security architecture in the post-Soviet space. This is an embarrassing moment for the ruling Polish party. But at present, Warsaw has no leverage against Ukraine, except perhaps to publicly shame these “ungrateful” ones. And it is also obvious that it will not be easier for Poland with Ukraine after the Kiev regime ceases to “protect” Europe from the “Russian threat,” as Podolyak said bluntly. |
| Posted by:badanov |