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Written by Uriel Araujo, researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts
Could Poland intervene in Ukraine? Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to consider the possibility. At May 28 press conference during his visit to Uzbekistan, he said: “the Polish authorities say they are ready to send their contingents. We can hear Polish language, so there are many mercenaries from Poland.” He added: “if some contingents from European countries enter Ukraine together with the Poles, others will later leave whereas the Poles will never do. This is obvious, at least for me. I might be wrong but I doubt that.” The Russian President described this scenario as an “escalation” and “yet another step towards a large conflict in Europe and globally.”
Putin’s impressions are somewhat echoed by the Polish authorities in Warsaw. In an interview published last week in the Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland’s Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski claimed his country should not exclude the possibility of sending troops to neighboring Ukraine:
“We should not exclude any option. Let Putin be guessing as to what we will do.” A spokesperson for Poland’s Defense Ministry, Janusz Sejmej, however, told Polish journalists that he had “no knowledge of that.”
Sikorski’s remark is in fact quite vague, just like French President Emmanuel Macron’s similar statements made earlier this year. Macron, while defending “strategic ambiguity”, has suggested “European troops” (“but not NATO”) “could” be deployed to Ukraine. It is the same kind of Schrödinger’s cat’s reasoning employed by analysts and US officials such as Jahara Matisek (Military Professor at the U.S. Naval War College), Alex Crowther (Retired US Colonel), and Philips P. O’Brien (Head of the School of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews), who have argued that “European forces would be acting outside the NATO framework and NATO territory”, and thus “any casualties would not trigger an Article 5 response and draw in the United States”. After all, they reason, “Russia’s opponent would not be NATO but a coalition of European countries seeking to balance against naked Russian imperialism”. In other words, it would be a coalition of NATO members which, however, is not NATO at all.
The problem, as I wrote earlier, is that NATO combat troops (or is it just troops from NATO state members?) have already been arriving in Ukraine in large numbers. This has been confirmed by NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who said that “several NATO allies have men and women in uniform at the embassies”, but claims they are merely “giving advice.” Stoltenberg also announced that NATO state members have air defense systems ready to be sent to the Eastern European country. He stressed that NATO members have the “right” to “help” Ukraine. This however does not make the Atlantic Alliance itself a party to the conflict as the reasoning – “strategic ambiguity” or not – is quite questionable.
Ukrainian-Polish quarrels aside, Warsaw has been a logistical hub for aid reaching its neighboring country since February 2022. Amid a trade dispute, former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki famously said his country no longer had arms to send to Kyiv (in September 2023). However, the new Polish government seems to have placed Ukraine back at the center of its foreign policy.
As I wrote before, the two neighboring countries, already in May 2022, clearly took steps towards a future Ukrainian-Polish confederation, as seen with plans announced back then by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for bilateral agreements pertaining to joint border and customs control, among other things. On May 3, Andrzej Duda (who serves as Poland’s President to this day) went so far as to state that he had hopes that one day “there will be no border” between the two countries. It remains to be seen whether such projects shall gain traction again.
Historically, Ukrainian-Polish relations are complex: the Western portion of Ukraine was in fact ruled by Poland on different occasions, including during the age of the then Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in a process that started after 1349. By 1569, most of “Ruthenia” (which largely corresponds to Western Ukraine) had become Polish territory. The pressures for so-called Polonization, which included forced conversions to Roman Catholicism, and the enserfment of the peasantry by Poland, alienated Cossacks and Christian Orthodox peasants.
In 1648, the Cossack leader Bohdan Khmelnytsky famously led a rebellion against the Polish King, founded the Cossack Hetmanate, and was hailed as a liberator. In 1654, with the Pereyaslav treaty, this new Cossack state, considered a predecessor to Ukraine, pledged its loyalty to the Russian Tsar. This is not just ancient history – there is an ongoing historiographic debate with, as often happens, political repercussions: to this very day, Khmelnytsky is hailed by some as a Ukrainian national hero and a precursor of Ukrainian nationalism (because of his fight against Polish domination) – while others criticize him for his alliance with the Tsar.
More recently in History, Ukraine was once again ruled by Poland after the 1921 Riga peace treaty, and anti-Polish sentiments remain part of Ukrainian nationalism to this day. The way both nations politicize 20th century history has in fact often hampered their bilateral relations. During World War II, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), glorified as a “heroic” organization in post-Maidan Ukraine, cooperated with the Nazi German Waffen-SS and committed various war crimes against Poles (as well as Jews and others). Again, this is not just 20th century history, but has echoes today, as seen with Ukraine’s infamous far-right problem.
The so-called Eastern Flank is a strategic region for the Atlantic Alliance. NATO’s enlargement, both eastwards and northwards towards the Arctic, is certainly one of the key causes of today’s crisis since 2014. Poland has wished for a while to make a comeback to the stage of History and geopolitics, so to speak – even aspiring for regional leadership in Europe. It remains to be seen whether or not Polish aspirations materialize in the form of a tragic escalation that can only bring the world closer to global thermonuclear war.
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“hello duda, it’s zelenski, we need five billion rockets to shoot at donetske children for ten seconds”.
‘we will just check with boris, over in london and get the permission to give you 10 billion rockets to launch at the babies and toddlers in donetsk…’ ‘oh thank you mr tusk, you are so generous’.
ok, but only on one condition. forget the ten seconds and make it another ten years. as one enthusiastic freedom fighter in odessa at the trade union barbecue yelled into the crowd : “we have to kill them all” and as yet another very astute us congresswoman in 2014 explained “a little nationalism is a good thing.”
then they will die. we don’t care. nato is a paper tiger.
scissors cuts paper, paper covers rock, rock breaks scissors and a tos-1 blows them all to hell.
i wonder if russia will nuke just the attacking nato countries or all but the usa or all of them at once or the european nato countries will be killed by american/zionist bio-weapons when no longer useful.
none of the above. russia needs to keep doing what it’s doing now. the entire collective west is spiralling out of control and it will collapse at some point. there are too many artificial bubbles about to pop that will ruin the eu and the us, they need the escalation as a diversion
russia wanted to demilitarise ukraine and denazify it. i wonder if they also knew that they would take out nato and the eu at the same time? almost complete.
the entire build up to the military operation was already orchestrated by the eu, us and nato. russia would have known this was designed a long time ago, remember nuland and her famous f*ck the eu rant?
no doubt, even before that. 1992, the mother of chrystia freeland, was over in ukraine writing the new constitution, together with $oro$. 1993, $oro$ was planning for the us to use eastern europe to take out russia. 2004, $oro$ funded orange revolution, with the clinton’s turning up in ukraine.
2/2 2006, senator obama ends up in ukraine, with a suitcase of $us to convince them to hand over their domestic arsenal. 2008, georgia invades russia dependent territory of south ossetia. what colour was that revolution? was it the rose revolution? 2014, orange revolution in ukraine, part 2. will there be a gene pool left in ukraine by the end of june?
don’t forget there’ve been two more color revolution attempts in georgia in the last 4 years. nato really is desperate to control that black sea.
soros always had a thing for cooperating with the nazis, going way back to his concentration camp days as a youngster hustler.
well, they all thought russia would collapse in 3 months and then they could loot it and their economies would all be hunky dory.
best laid plans of rats and rookies.
there could be a las vegas bookmaker giving odds on that.
usa to poland: go in poland, there is a second breakfast for you…
remember kids, this is what’s being described in the western media as “ukraine is winning”. they’re winning so hard they have trouble finding men to send to the frontline, so now the french and poles need to come in and “save” them.
never in the history of humankind has an army of draft dodgers ever won a war.
exactly my point. ukraine is failing on the battlefield so now they are asking others to assist. but hey, history has shown us how easy it is to defeat russia, right 🤣
french fries and polish sausage, feeding the meat grinder. cannot say they were not warned.
i like both of them cooked well and crispy, so let it rain thermobaric weapons to fry all the french fries and sausages!
“poland is not a country is a corridor.” stepan bandera
this was predicted years ago by a guy online who explained that poland is the real center of nato/usa in eastern europe against rf. everything falls into place but sorry guys game over!
it all went into overdrive when anne applebaum and hubby sikorski opened a chain of kosher kielbasa kiosks throughout poland, not realizing that the brand kkk would immediately catch on with the nazi-tattoo crowd in neighboring ukraine. these were the first indications of a beginning era of amalgamation between fascism and zionism that continues to this very day.
that’s a cute story, but it’s hardly the “first indications” of the interminglings of the two ideologies. zionism is nothing but the particular jewish supremacist stream of fascism. has been since herzl had the epiphany that told him it would be a-ok to kick the arabs out of palestine.
bogdan hmelnitskiy (that’s correct) led his rebellion after denial of new king jan ii kazimierz waza to grant nobility to hmelnitskiy. it was promised by previous king vladislav 4 wasa as attempt to pacify cossackry. there were 2 cossackries: zaporozhian and the registered which served to polish king. hmelnitskiy led the independent one, some kind of tortuga which was ready to ally with everybody who pays, but with slight preference towards russia, because most of cossacs were ethnic russians.
poland and ukraine running butt to butt in the simian sweepstakes and once again, poland crosses the finish line by its butt of all jokes. how it managed to cross the finish line on a horse running backwards has yet to be explained.
they sold their eurovision votes for the most shekles they could get… bought a fast backwards running horse from boris johnson…
hmelnitskiy can’t be national hero of ukros, because no such nation existed before 1917. russian people lives here for over 1000 years and founded all cities. may be poland founded some, but not ukros. you can find town of rava russkaya (1455) on the border with poland. as well as village of russkie tishki (1663) in harkov region. judeo-banderites ruined church in kiev month ago. if you are disturbed be people’s language and religion, city names and monuments, you are an occupier.
obviously you need to have a sit down with yushchenko and learn the real history of the magic ukrainian people and their empire. ukretardism can give mormonism a run for its money any day.
yushchenko? what’s old pineapple face doing these days, anyway?
when the banderite boys gave him a nazty nightcap to evoke sympathy and blame the russkies to win the vote, it sort of took the sizzle out of his whizzle.
the west should have figured out how devious those ukranazis can be way back then, unless of course the westies planned the whole thing themselves. these days, you never know who’s behind the curtain.
the ukros can call anyone they want as their hero. this is a people that think they taught the egyptians how to build pyramids, after all.
3 seas initiative and poland seriously itching to get lyev back under polish control. seriously weird leaders, who support those that took their people out, whether the ukrainian branch of the ss or the german branch. not forgetting what the poles did, in order to upset the germans in the first place. never a world war, without poland stirring the pot.
french professional army have 80 000 men. in case of full scale war it represent 2 month of fighting. 50% of young people have african background and lot of them don’t consider france as their country. it means lot of them will flee to africa (and it’s the best thing to do). one 70 millions french their is 15 millions older than 60. in case of total mobilisation french army won’t exceed 2 millions young white men. the other will be forced to stay home to avoid a racial civil war…
the goal of this escalation is to destroy another white country : poland. then they will be replaced by a more diverse population and the globalists win.
the polish aristocracy were responsible for a lot of the antisemitism in western ukraine. they would employ jewish administrators to govern the slavic peasants on their lands. the peasants would then hate those of the jewish faith. thats why the germans found so many willing killers in western ukraine during the holocaust.
y’all dropping some dang fine truth bombs… so much more refreshing than tom sawyer babble, any day…
i thought that’s what the hapsburgs did with the czechs. excellent bean counters and boot lickers, those czechs.
kalergy wrote in 1925 : “instead of destroying european jewry, europe, against its own will, refined and educated this people into a future leader-nation through this artificial selection process. no wonder that this people, that escaped ghetto-prison, developed into a spiritual nobility of europe. therefore a gracious providence provided europe with a new race of nobility (…) thanks to jewish emancipation.”
10 minutes and only 2% of russian nuclear forces needed to erase poland from the map and the history books. some 20k poles already involved are either sitting in hospital, graves, body bags, or have become a new kind of paint job for afu reserve positions hit by iskanders.
we jibber like pole but hide under amerikan skirt like pole
suicidal poles. what else to expect!
as a finnish parliamentarian once said ’ well a little radiation should a man manage’ and at that i guess he is right.
what does he care about getting radiated? finnish men don’t procreate. their women take vacations in mediterranean countries to get knocked up.
poland could intervene? is that a bad thing? russia could then rid the world of two loose cannon nuances at once.