Polish journalist Witold Jurasz published a commentary on Onet, which is his country’s largest online media platform, titled “What’s in the secret annexes of Zelensky’s plan? Poland just dropped out of the game”. He’s one of his country’s leading journalists and broke the story last month about the argument that Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski had with Zelensky over military aid and the Volhynia Genocide dispute during his latest trip to Kiev. That toxified their ties and set the stage for what was to follow.
Jurasz drew attention to how Zelensky didn’t include Poland in the list of countries that were given the secret annex to his “Victory Plan” according to what the Ukrainian leader revealed during his speech about this to the Rada last week. It was only shared with the US, the UK, France, Italy, and Germany. Jurasz also mentioned how Zelensky offered the G7 special investment opportunities, and seeing as how Poland isn’t an individual member of that bloc, he also noted that it’d been excluded from that too.
This top journalist, who used to serve as his country’s chargé d’affaires in Belarus and is thus considered to still be very well connected to the Polish Foreign Ministry (from which he was presumably told about last month’s scandal in Kiev), then shared some harsh commentary about all of this. It’ll be republished in full below and then analyzed, including in the context of Poland being left out of Friday’s meeting between Biden, Starmer, Macron, and Schulz in Berlin the day after his piece was published:
“The question that must be answered by the politicians and experts who co-created our eastern policy both during the PiS government and the current government is how it happened that after investing so much in supporting Ukraine, we now not only have poor relations with Kiev, but are also not among the partners in the key plan.
The public should also find out whether this is the result of decisions made solely in Kiev, or also as a result of pressure from our Western allies. In the past – let us recall – when the so-called Minsk agreements were being negotiated, it was not only Kiev that did not want us at the negotiating table.
Excessive idealism, naivety, wishful thinking and ignoring reality are not, as it will probably turn out, a ticket to deciding world politics. Those who do so are of course left with, as always, a sense of ‘moral victory’. It is a pity that once again in history this will probably be all we will have left.”
What Jurasz is calling for is full accountability for this lamentable state of affairs where Poland is clearly excluded from the Ukrainian endgame despite all that it’s done to help that country since 2022. He blames politicians from its two main parties, Polish experts (understood to be a reference to his former diplomatic colleagues), Ukraine, and Poland’s Western allies. The innuendo is that the last two exploited Poland’s stereotypical foreign policy idealism to get what they wanted from it before dumping it.
President Andrzej Duda revealed in late August that Polish assistance to Ukraine had reached around $25 billion by that time when factoring in both humanitarian and military assistance, the latter of which includes almost 400 tanks, with it altogether equaling around 3.3% of his country’s GDP. It was also explained earlier in the summer how “Poland Was Just As Much To Blame As Britain For Sabotaging Spring 2022’s Peace Talks” since the proxy war couldn’t have continued without Polish logistical support.
These facts make it all the more painful for Poles that their country was also just excluded from Friday’s meeting between the American, British, French, and German leaders in Berlin. Polish analyst Zygfryd Czaban published a very insightful post on X here about Germany’s machinations, which align with this analysis from earlier in the year here about how Poland’s new liberal-globalist coalition government has comprehensively subordinated their country to Germany. These three analyses are also useful to review:
* 16 August 2023: “Germany’s Promised Military Patronage Of Ukraine Ramps Up Its Regional Competition With Poland”
* 23 September 2023: “Poland Hinted That Germany Is To Blame For Its Dispute With Ukraine”
* 2 October 2023: “Morawiecki Suspects That Zelensky Struck A Deal With Germany Behind Poland’s Back”
The five hyperlinked materials above are relevant to last week’s developments since they lend credence to the hypothesis that Germany played the largest role in excluding Poland from the Ukrainian endgame. As Czaban assessed, Germany is “implementing its over-a-hundred-year-old concept of Mitteleuropa, i.e. the political and economic subordination of Central Europe to Germany”, which goes along with the US’ grand strategic goal of relying on Germany to manage the EU on its behalf as it “Pivots (back) to Asia”.
The takeaway is that Poland has been exploited by both Ukraine and the West, especially Germany, and it’s now excluded from its allies’ plans to bring an end to NATO’s proxy war on Russia. Poland began this conflict as a semi-independent subject of International Relations, or so it thought, but is now ending it as a de facto German vassal with no say in how everything ends nor any tangible reward for investing a full 3.3% of its GDP into this endeavor over the past two and a half years. This is a pitiful outcome.
It also can’t help but breed resentment among average Poles and some of their officials alike, who might come to describe this turning point in hindsight as yet another “Western Betrayal” of their country. They’ll also likely despise Ukraine even more than many of them are already beginning to do after realizing that the country that they took for granted as their “junior partner” ended up getting the best of it and reversing their roles. Poland has now become Ukraine’s “junior partner” with all that entails.
Zelensky’s senior advisor Mikhail Podolyak declared in August 2023 that “Poland] will remain [our closest partner and friend] until the end of the war. After it’s over, of course, we will have a competitive relationship, of course, we will compete for various markets, consumers, and so on. And, of course, we will clearly adopt pro-Ukrainian positions, protect these interests, fiercely defend them.” The worst-case scenario is that Ukraine begins to push its implied territorial claims to its new “junior” Polish partner.
These were described here and here, which are beyond the scope of this analysis to elaborate on but refer to the combination of Zelensky’s implied claims to Russia from January, Duda’s vetoing of a bill in May to make Silesian a regional language, and the former Ukrainian Foreign Minister’s claims in August. The basis therefore exists for Ukraine to make such a move at a future date, whether unilaterally in the hopes of pressuring the West to then support it or perhaps after first receiving their blessing.
Regardless of whatever happens, last week’s developments prove that Poland has been excluded from the Ukrainian endgame at the expense of its objective national interests, which represents a major failure of its foreign policy. Idealist policymakers didn’t realize that they were being exploited by Ukraine, Germany, and the US, and there’s little they can do to rectify this even if they finally learn their lesson. Average Poles might never forgive all four, however, which could lead to a sea change in public opinion.
