Richard Hubert Barton
The honeymoon is over and is never to come back, Richard Barton writes.
It all started with the grain dispute. After Ukraine was blocked to export its grains, primarily wheat, through the Black Sea, the only available route left was overland through Poland, Slovakia and Hungary. It turned out that such a route was not available anymore. The Polish authorities faced with their farmers' massive protests were quick to note that Ukrainian wheat is of substandard quality and didn't meet the EU requirements. It was sold in most of the cases by one third of the European price and would have meant a disaster for the farmers. In view of the forthcoming elections on 15 October this year, the Law and Justice party was quick to realise that it could even put them out of power. After all, rural votes are the traditional electoral stronghold of the party.
However, there were other international political developments that cast a long shadow on the relations between Poland and Ukraine. Just a few days ago at the General Assembly of UN president Zelensky accused Poland of a grave sin of "helping Russia." The reaction of the Polish political leadership was immediate and with devastating effects. President of Poland Duda refused to meet Zelensky at the UN backrooms. Further, he stated publicly in reference to Zelensky that "insulting Polish people again" would not be tolerated. On the other hand, Premier Morawiecki made it clear that Poland would not help Ukraine anymore and now would have to concentrate on improving its own armed forces. What's more, it turned out that the Polish government was about to stop payments of social benefits and revoking work permits to about one million Ukrainians in Poland.
Some anti-Ukrainian Poles rushed to present the bill for all the arms deliveries and other types of assistance to Ukraine. It amounted to roughly 100 billion Polish zlotys i.e. around 23 billion US dollars. President Andrzej Duda and premier Mateusz Morawiecki, manipulated by their behind-the-scenes protector, deputy prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, are among the top Russophobes in the world. So one can't view the confrontation that recently happened between Poland and Ukraine any other way as something, to put it mildly, unheard of. But sometimes, the impossible is possible these days!
Some other members of the Polish ruling elite brought back some vivid memories of genocide of no less than 100 thousand Polish civilian population brutally killed by the UPA in western Ukraine during and after WWII. According to all signs in heaven and earth, this grim question is still in the way of peaceful and harmonious relations between Poland and Ukraine.
On a few days' stop-over in Warsaw on May 17, 2008 someone told me about a historic session at the Polish Sejm under the meaningful slogan: Poland-Ukraine, Friendship and Partnership. Shame and Condemnation to OUN-UPA. During that unusual session everyone was allowed to mingle with the anti-UPA delegates from Kiev. Some of them insisted that the real number of slaughtered civilians was much higher and included approximately half a million of Poles, 300 thousand Jews and about 85 thousand Ukrainians who refused to kill their non-Ukrainian neighbours. I listened to all of this petrified.
Not any less terrifying was information about three brave Poles (Zygmunt Rumel, Krzysztof Markiewicz, and Witold Dobrowoski) who on the instruction on the Polish underground got in touch with UPA (07.07.1943) for the purpose of stopping the Volhynia massacre. No talks for that purpose took place whatsoever. They were deceitfully detained, tortured, killed by way of being torn apart with the use of horses and their remains were axed to pieces.
A few days ago, I listened to a Russian TV show, where an academic claimed that Poland is after getting western Ukraine. He didn't stop at that and claimed that population of western parts of Volhynia and Podole show greater similarities to Poles than their compatriots further to the East. This may be true but it doesn't mean that they want to live in or be part of Poland! There is no such thing as Polonisation of Ukraine. Let's do away with such a myth forever! Such mistaken ideas are expressed not only by the abovementioned armchair scholar but also quite a number of the Polish ruling elite possessing theoretical knowledge about Ukraine that has little to do with the real affairs there. Luckily, there is no concrete plans to "liberate" former Polish eastern lands, and if ever they will be created and implemented, it will be hard going. If so, blame for the problems that would have arisen will most likely be put on the Russian Federation!
Although the wrongdoings of the past provide a powerful background that cannot be dismissed within the very most recent Poland-Ukraine scenario, the bone of contention must be seen a bit separately. The Polish leaders, no matter how Russophobic they have been or have pretended to be to please Uncle Sam, they realised that the long-awaited Ukrainian offensive came to nothing. They are aware that it will be harder and harder to obtain a continuing stream of military supplies from the West. Perhaps what already looms in their analytical horizons for the future is that they are likely to face Putin's Russia the way it is and... maybe, despite the huge anti-Russia western propaganda, Polish-Russian relations may be not that bad after all. Nevertheless, for the present moment neither Duda nor Morawiecki can admit anything like that publicly. They mustn't risk the wrath of Joe Biden. However, with things going bad in America, once the funds for Zelensky are cut to a considerable extent, the Polish leaders will have more freedom to manoeuvre about downgrading the level of Polish-Ukrainian cooperation.
Zelensky himself is getting more and more desperate. He is trying to make his apologies to Duda a postponed and quiet affair. To minimise this humiliating climbdown he must have turned for help to Biden who already demanded from Duda to clarify what is going on between Ukraine and Poland after the verbal clash at the UN.
In all likelihood, Duda in his reply to Biden will recall that Zelensky already earlier offended the British defence minister, Ben Wallace and will insist on Zelensky's apologies. And what afterwards? Poland, still under American pressure may resume some assistance which in no way will be comparable with what it was in the past. The honeymoon is over and is never to come back. What's more, the grain deal in favour of Ukraine is not on, even if the EU leadership will try to push Poland hard.
There is a new factor that is emerging with all clarity and is likely to grow in strength. Namely, public opinion polls indicate that more than 80% of Polish citizens are against further assistance to Ukraine. In this light, it is worth recalling that Russia's outstanding Ambassador to Poland, Sergey Andreev (the one pelted with red paint at VE Day gathering) rightly noted in March this year that about 80% of Polish people have friendly attitudes towards Russians.
In recent days, Polish foreign minister, Zbigniew Rau in a frank comment in New York did try to foresee future resumption of some aid to Ukraine by Poland but he insisted that the Polish government couldn't belittle the anti-aid views of 80 % of Poles.
Despite the raucous western media Russia is likely to show a great deal of patience toward Poland and in a longer while there could be major improvements in relations between the two countries.