Poland’s conservative-nationalist opposition is enraged that the ruling liberal-globalist government agreed to hand over Pavel Rubtsov, the Russian-Spanish journalist who’s also known as Pablo Gonzalez and was detained near the Ukrainian border shortly after the special operation began, without anything in return. The former coordinator of the security services confirmed that he held talks with the Americans on this matter and proposed swapping him with Belarus for two of its ethnic Polish detainees.
Minsk never agreed to these terms, yet Rubtsov was handed over to Russia during last week’s historic prisoner swap per the US’ request, thus depriving Warsaw of main card that they could have played to secure the release of those Poles. Furthermore, Biden thanked the Polish President – who hails from the conservative-nationalist opposition and usually opposes the ruling liberal-globalists – for his cooperation on this matter, thus complicating the narrative that’s now being spun.
The reality is that Poland always dutifully complies with the US’ demands regardless of whichever of its two main parties is in power at any given time since its permanent military, intelligence and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) unanimously agree that their country should be America’s most loyal ally. There was accordingly never any doubt that they’d hand over Rubtsov to Russia upon its request without getting anything in return from Belarus like they’ve tried securing for a while already.
For as conservative-nationalist as the Polish opposition presents itself as being, and they’re admittedly very imperfect in this respect, the fact of the matter is that the former ruling party that’s making such a fuss about this won’t dare talk about the abovementioned elephant in the room. Criticism of the US on any issue except occasional disagreements over socio-cultural ones like abortion and LGBT is considered to be treasonous and no one from either of the country’s two main parties would ever do this.
That’s regrettable in this particular instance since Poland could have leveraged its role in this historic swap to secure the release of those detained Poles. It’s unimportant whether one believes that they’re guilty of anti-state activities like the ones that Belarus convicted them of since all countries should pursue their objective national interests, which in this case would have been swapping Rubtsov for them. Truly patriotic Poles would therefore do well to draw attention to both parties’ collusion in this affair.
Of course, they should also take care to do so within the extremely narrow limitations of their country’s “politically correct” discourse in order to avoid being smeared as so-called “Russian agents”, but it’s still possible to make the point that Poland’s subordination to the US isn’t always in its interests. Most Poles love America and feel safe in NATO, but they can still come along to realizing that doing everything that the US says isn’t wise since it leads to truly lopsided outcomes like last week’s.
The greater good was advanced by releasing Rubtsov, but Pole could have secured the release of those two detained Poles in Belarus if it had the courage to defy the US and make its cooperation in this swap contingent on getting something tangible in return. Instead, its leaders settled for superficial praise from the US and the media spin that this was a “selfless act of solidarity with the West”, which upsets truly patriotic Poles who know that their country could have gotten more if they weren’t American puppets.
