Yves here. Andrew Korybko suggests that it would behoove the US to notice the Ukraine-Germany-Poland power struggles and intervene on behalf of Poland v. Germany. But that would require finesse, a quality not much in evidence in the Administration.
I also am curious to see if European readers agree with this take. It seems plausible that Germany, despite becoming weaker due to de-industrialization and increasingly sharp political divides, would still seek to maximize its position.
By Andrew Korybko, a Moscow-based American political analyst who specializes in the global systemic transition to multipolarity in the New Cold War. He has a PhD from MGIMO, which is under the umbrella of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Originally published at his website
The Biden Administration can either turn a blind eye to its German liberal-globalist allies’ dual power plays over Ukraine and Poland or pragmatically support the latter in order to maintain the geopolitical balance in Europe by averting German hegemony. Whichever of these two options it chooses will have far-reaching implications for US grand strategy.
Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Arkadiusz Mularczyk’s interview on Friday with the RMF24 radio station saw him hint that Germany is to blame for his country’s dispute with Ukraine. Their bilateral tensions, which saw Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki reveal that Warsaw won’t supply Kiev with modern arms any longer, were discussed here and should be read for background. What follows are highlights from the Google Translated version of Mularczyk’s interview that will then be analyzed in the larger context:
———-
* Poland expects the US to take its side by convincing Ukraine to correct its attitude
– “I think that in some way the participation of the United States will cool down hot Ukrainian heads.”
* Kiev’s decision to publicize its problems with Poland risks weakening the anti-Russian coalition
– “This dispute, which is publicly disseminated around the world, serves neither Poland nor Ukraine. Neither does it serve our common cause – defeating Russia in this war. It should be absolutely quiet, all kinds of misunderstandings resolved. This is our goal.”
* Germany is suspected of trying to cut deals with Ukraine behind Poland’s back
– “We see attempts to ‘bypass’ Poland, i.e. talks about transit through Poland and trade in Ukrainian grain over our heads. Certain clues lead to Berlin. It is probably obvious that the frequent recent visits of many ministers to Kiev, as well as meetings of President Zelensky with important German politicians, including Ursula von der Leyen, are perhaps arrangements above our heads.”
* German-controlled Brussels has ulterior motives in offering to resolve the grain dispute
– “Thank you for such help, where Poland is ordered over our heads to open its Polish borders to Ukrainian grain, the aim of which is to finish off Polish agriculture and Polish farmers. Mrs. von der Leyen is not the President or Prime Minister of Poland and these matters are decided in Poland, not in Brussels.”
* Ukraine needs to engage directly with Poland, not Germany, if it wants to improve bilateral ties
– “Ukrainians must understand that if they want to have good relations with Poland, they must establish it with Poland, not with Berlin.”
* Ukrainian oligarchs profit from the German plot to kill Poland’s domestic agricultural industry
– “For these large, global farms and oligarchs in Ukraine, it is best to sell grain in Poland, because it is the cheapest transport, the closest to a large market and it is the most convenient for them. We are open to transit. Let this grain go to France, Berlin, Hamburg, and then to Spain. However, we cannot allow this grain to reach Poland and eliminate Polish agriculture.”
———-
Mularczyk’s argument is intriguing for several reasons. First, it absolves Zelensky of full responsibility by portraying him as a German puppet, which secondly revives Poland’s traditional paranoia about that country’s geopolitical intentions. Third, it replaces prior fears of a secret German-Russian deal over Poland with a new German-Ukrainian one. Fourth, it implies that oligarchs put Zelensky up to this, which finally suggests that he can crack down on them and other pro-German forces to resolve this dispute.
Germany’s alleged power play to kill Poland’s domestic agricultural industry by flooding it with Ukrainian grain aligns with the geostrategic motives explained in this analysis here earlier the summer about how “Germany’s Military Patronage Of Ukraine Ramps Up Its Regional Competition With Poland”. In brief, it was assessed that Berlin is striving to replace Warsaw as Kiev’s top European partner, all with the aim of further pressuring Poland into returning to its traditional post-communist status as a German vassal.
The upcoming elections on 15 October will play a pivotal role in this respect since the return to power of the “Civic Platform” (PO) opposition would end the ruling “Law & Justice” (PiS) party’s plans to replicate the late Jozef Pilsudski’s policy of remaining equidistant from Germany and Russia via a regional sphere of influence. If the incumbents win re-election though, even if they have to form a coalition government with the anti-establishment Confederation party, then they’re expected to largely retain this course.
Therein lies one of the reasons why Germany is supposedly trying to destroy Poland’s domestic agricultural industry as soon as possible via the means that Mularczyk detailed through Ukrainian grain since PiS will require the continued loyalty of its rural base in order to remain in power. Economically ravaging this electorally strategic part of the country ahead of the next elections could very well doom PiS’ plans, ergo why Berlin allegedly cooked up this latest grain scheme with Kiev’s related oligarchs.
Polish Agriculture Minister Robert Telus claimed in late August prior to the European Commission lifting its prior compromise deal over its eastern members’ unilateral ban on associated Ukrainian imports that this was an attempt to meddle in the polls:
[It’s] a purely political decision…There are no substantive arguments, nor has anyone presented them to us. Politically, there are elections on 15 October and it’s about destabilising…The EU is trying to use us as part of a partisan struggle. These are very important elections for Poland, but also for Europe, because the narrative in Europe is changing completely: right-wing narratives are starting to win and this leftist policy of the EU is starting to lose.
Mularczyk’s arguments are essentially a more detailed elaboration of Telus’ assessment that doesn’t shy away from directly blaming Germany for the dispute that subsequently unfolded with Ukraine over this extremely sensitive issue.
It’s also interesting to draw attention to his emphasis on Germany’s suspected cultivation of influence among Ukraine’s agricultural oligarchs. That point implies that Poland is well aware of who truly calls the shots behind the scenes in that country, namely shadowy but very powerful forces much more than its public representatives. Apart from the oligarchs, who operate in a wide array of industries, this also includes various factions among its military and intelligence services.
Germany’s supposedly secret alliance with Ukraine’s agricultural oligarchs show that it’s trying to pull Zelensky’s strings via these forces, though that doesn’t absolve him of responsibility for this dispute since it was he himself who hinted at the UNGA that Poland was doing Russia’s bidding. Mularczyk’s condemnation of him for those remarks and his concern that they risk weakening the anti-Russian coalition flips the script by ironically suggesting that it’s Zelensky who’s the one doing Russia’s bidding.
Even so, the rest of his interview builds the narrative that powerful agricultural oligarchs pushed him to do this at Germany’s urging, but it gives Zelensky the chance to resolve the Polish-Ukrainian dispute by cracking down on these forces. For that to happen, however, Poland believes that the US would have to convince him to make this move and fully back him in the face of the potential consequences. In effect, Mularczyk wants Zelensky to purge German agents of influence on a US-backed anti-corruption pretext.
He’s unlikely to do this on his own at that Polish official’s thinly disguised request, which is why it’ll ultimately come down to whatever the US decides to do. The Biden Administration can either turn a blind eye to its German liberal–globalist allies’ dual power plays over Ukraine and Poland or pragmatically support the latter in order to maintain the geopolitical balance in Europe by averting German hegemony. Whichever of these two options it chooses will have far-reaching implications for US grand strategy.
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I’m not familiar with the details here. Should one assume that finance backed oligarchs have re-collectivized Ukrainian agriculture and are now looking for a return on investment, fielding glossy green portfolios with shiny new tractors and happy children frolicking in grain to western officials. I must say I’m impressed with the ability of the Polish/Hungarian agricultural sectors to sniff this one out in the planning stages.
On Germany, I assume securing their grain supply at least is one liberty still allowed to the satraps in Berlin, for the present.
In 2018, landowners do not seem to be big US interests, contrary to a lot of hyperventilating I have seen:
https://www.largescaleagriculture.com/home/news-details/top-10-ukraines-largest-agricultural-landholders-2018/
But then see:
https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/new-report-take-over-ukrainian-agricultural-land
This report claims a land grab and I don’t have time to read it. However, the summary has a lot of red flags of the analysts not knowing what they are talking about. The summary does not sound as if the oligarch and largely European owners in the 2018 list were overleveraged. Second, some of the names they treat as bad guys like Vanguard are passive investors and won’t take action re how the farming operations are run. Similarly, selling public shares is not pernicious; public shareholders have no say in how the companies in which they hold stock are run, unless they acauire a controlling interest. More generally, I am not sure if averageUkrainians are worse off if there land is exploited by (routinely corrupt local oligarchs or foreign investors.
There’s great fear in Ukraine about the land question. Constitutionally, Ukraine limited the amount of land a single person could own and did not allow any foreign ownership. Loosening that was a big part of the 2014 EU agreement. The nationalist right wing in Ukraine was deeply angry about it and Zelensky’s moves to liberalize the agricultural policy right up to late January 2022.
It probably has not gone as far as is claimed by some, and I tend to agree with your analysis of the overall situation. But like everything else in Ukraine, it’s murky. The claim of transnational Big Ag owning everything is probably more like how big ag controls American farming with contract production requiring specific seeds, inputs and even sales of product.
I think the question and consequences of law changes are far more domestic politics than international machinations.
This was posted in links a while ago. Not sure how accurate it is but it made me question ag investment in the region:
https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/war-theft-takeover-ukraine-agricultural-land
Thanks. I had had that in the draft of my comment and seem to have made quite the fat fingered error when posting.
Yup. Poland and Hungary had a healthy small holding based agricultural sector during the socialist phase of their past. They won’t cave now if they didn’t in harder times.
It might work with Romanians though…
Poles now demand that Germans pay them a cool € 1 trillion in “reparations.” This stirs up voter anger, particularly here in what was formerly the GDR / East Germany.
So right now it’s probably an electoral plus for the German elite to be seen as saying Poland can go jump in the lake.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/poland-demands-1-3-trillion-in-world-war-ii-reparations-from-germany
The plot thickens!
According to a recent Golbert Doctorow post, the local oligarchs own much of the farmland in Ukraine, and shipping grain to Europe at cut-rate prices directly benefits those interests and not smaller farmers. Doctorow states that ¨American agricultural behemouths¨ own about 28% of the country´s farmland. In addition to the massive industrial wheat growing practices they have introduced, the industrial scale production extends to poultry and other products. For those reasons, it does not seem likely that Biden will twist any arms for the beneffit of Mularczyk. Biden knows on which side his bread is buttered.
Depends on how radioactive the crops might be.
‘Depleted’ Uranium?
Sell!
To be fair, grain crops can be used for remediation of heavy metals in soil (e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9148070) but it’s not generally advisable to export and/or consume the results.
“Certain clues lead to Berlin.”
And more Polish melodrama. I am holding a list of fellow-traveling German bureaucrats…
I suppose that I shouldn’t weigh in on this cat fight, but from my point of view in northwest Italy, I’d say that I will take the humorless and pushy Germans over the humorless and pushy Poles any day. Germany is “core” EU–one of the founders. Poland is not a German vassal (come on), and Poland has been trying for various workarounds, runarounds, and complain-arounds all too often.
Is Germany subtly trying to destroy Polish agriculture? Even after the daffiness of not admitting who blew up Nord Stream, the Germans aren’t that clueless. No, Warsaw, Germany isn’t trying to destroy Polish agriculture.
In my view:
The PiS trying to use nationalism to their electoral interest. Hence M. evoking here the German-Russian agreement in WWII etc. Not paranoia but electoral calculations trying to bring back farmer voters, and making “friends” elsewhere by the way.
I agree and would add that blaming Germany for the Zelensky government suing Poland makes the Polish government look better in being ardent supporters of Ukraine.
If Ukraine (or worse, the US via Ukraine) pays Poland so poorly for all the support, well that could make voters question the wisdom of supporting Ukraine. But if it was a dastardly German plot, then it isn’t Ukraine’s fault that Ukraine is suing Poland. And all the change needed is to stand up to Germany.
Poland (and other countries such as Slovakia) has long become a subcontractor workshop for Germany. Germany is the main target country for Polish exports (28%, way more than any other country) and the main origin for imports (20%, much more than the 13% from China). Poland is nr. 5 for German exports, and nr. 4 for imports — and Germany has a trade surplus with Poland.
Poland is also a major beneficiary of EU funds — whose main contributor is Germany. There has been quite some acrimony caused by the EU Commission’s (lead by German Ursula von der Leyen) threat to withhold such funds following the controverisal Polish constitutional reforms of the PiS.
Thanks to its economic might, Germany pretty much dictates its will on the rest of EU — and Poland resents that.
Ever since the war in Ukraine, Poland has taken jabs at the German economy: insistence on stopping Russian gas deliveries and blocking the corresponding pipelines, being unreliable at supplying crude to German refineries (and making lots of trouble because of their Russian ownership), threatening to shut down the Druzhba pipeline bringing Kazakh oil to Germany, and exulting upon the destruction of the Nordstreams. There have been other issues, such as massive, repeated pollutions of the Oder river (demarcating the border between Germany and Poland) — caused by Polish firms and in whose resolution Poland has been less than forthcoming.
I view the dispute on agricultural imports from Ukraine as yet another case of Poland, touchy with respect to its independence, and exasperated by its economic subjection to Germany, lashing at its neighbours. I doubt that such inept politicians as Habeck and Scholz would be able to hatch a plot to sink the PiS electorally by acting in cahoots with Zelensky, but it could well be that they view the arrival of cheap agricultural produce as helpful to tame food inflation in Germany. Note that Germany is peculiar amongst Western countries: after the reunification, the kolkhozes of the former GDR were privatized and taken over by large agro-business firms — which left Germany with very large farm operations, much larger than those in France for instance, and less costly to exploit (although this does not apply to Western Germany). So Germany might, rightly or wrongly, feel less threatened by all that bargain-priced wheat, sunflower seeds, and barley from Ukraine.
The close timing of the destruction of 3 out of 4 Nordstream lines, and the opening of the Polish pipeline always seemed suggestive to me, and I suspect that Poland is seeing an opportunity to take a more dominant role, at Germany’s expense. As to the US, Poland is heart of the neocon’s ‘New Europe’ I don’t think they have forgotten that, and I think their choice is already made and Poland will get its reparations one way or the other.
Aufnimmerwiedersehen Deutschland
Do hope they not overestimate how much that new pipeline can deliver through, as it connects to the same north sea fields as everything else. And those fields can’t hope to deliver the capacity that Russia did.
The idea that Poland is anything other than nominally independent is a laff.
I think Germany expects Poland to bear a commensurate burden for “combating” Russia, just like Germany is doing right now.
And as a general line in the EU, Poland isn’t seen in a good light being noticeably lacking in solidarity, in general and particularly regarding Ukraine, given Polands Hawkish status.
As for who controls Polands economic borders, the Poles seem to be very confused, in the sense that it is decided in Brussels not in Poland. If they don’t like that, article 50 is there, feel free to use it.
yeah. dance with thems that brung ya.
otoh, could this be some subtle german maneuver to maintain at least a semblance of regional heft via being a broker for ukrainian ag products?
i mean, since their industrial base is now withering, and all?
not that i think the bigwigs in germania are all that good at subtlety or anything of late…
Mularczyk sounds like a well balanced writer – in that he has a chip on each shoulder. I suppose that these sorts of internal fights are to be expected as Project Ukraine falls apart. Countries like Poland and Germany though at the start that they would get untold wealth from the whole thing – at the expense of Russia – but it turns out they they are instead suffering catastrophic losses. You could say that it is like a bunch of thieves falling out. I don’t know what Poland thought would happen when the Ukraine’s agricultural products were allowed into the EU, especially when you are talking about the sheer scale. Did they ever think that one out? But where he says that ‘Ukrainians must understand that if they want to have good relations with Poland, they must establish it with Poland, not with Berlin’ the problem is that Poland has. The Result? Frog, meet scorpion. But where he accused Germany of trying to destroy Polish agriculture using the Ukraine, should it be pointed out that that grain was supposed to go to hungry nations down south and not to fat EU nations? I hate to say it but it looks like from Poland’s behaviour that Polish diplomatic skills are on par with those in Washington.
Surely, he means Brussels, not Berlin? I’m not sure how much control Scholz has over German govt now, at least when it comes to foreign policy. Of course, vDL is a Eurocrat first and German second and I think the same is true with Baerbock, despite the latter having a German rather than EU portfolio.
I find it a bit interesting. The EU agreed to a blockade of Ukrainian-grown wheat some months ago under some logic, yet now they have decided to drop it. This is not in the interests of a member state, but rather of a non-member state. This begs the question – Why and how do you get away with it unless you do in fact consider some if not all CEE EU members as vassal states – Western European interests must have 1st priority. Also, good on picking up who owns all the grain, but what everyone is missing is that Germans, particularly German PE and family funds were taking out 100-year leases on Ukrainian lands right after Maidan (before you could buy the land), sometimes aggregating the plots of over 100 owners. So land ownership remains in Ukrainian hands but all rights in and production go to investors. So there are a significant number of German investors who have powerful connections – who want to see grain dumped in Poland so they can capture the highest profit.
Maybe one little factoid: Ukrainian grain and agricultural products are massively, really massively hurting German farmers as well. The only difference being that in Germany farmers are 3% of the electorate and in Poland more than 10%. Some powerful players got Brussels to allow tUkrainian grain into EU markets that was formerly exported thru the Black Sea. It is a shitshow all around and Poland is (rightfully in my view) pressuring Germany to do something about it. At least among German farmers the Polish president is certainly more popular than his German counterpart. And not to forget: Ukraine grows its wheat wih pesticides that were 30 years ago forbidden in the EU.
There is a big component of pre-election positioning, even more clear with subsequent talk about “end of military aid” to Ukraine. Elections come in few weeks, and the currently ruling party PiS, seems to have a single chance to be in the next government: coalition with a smaller “right wing party”, Konfederacja. The tricky part of that (a) PiS is economically populist, K is rather libertarian (b) PiS was gung-ho for militarization — doubling military budget and “civilizational struggle” with Russia with K opposes with slogans “it is not our war”, “end Ukrainization of Poland”.
Patching contradiction (b) requires 180 degree turn, apparently accomplished in two steps: pick a fight with Ukraine and escalate. PiS + K have more than 50% projected votes in some polls, in some less (when you remove undecided and those who plan to vote for very minor parties), only one recent poll projected more than 50% for PiS.
About the same time, Slovakia has elections too, and with much more fragmented political scene not described well in languages I know, hard to predict.
It doesn’t matter who wins the elections, the Polish government will come meekly to heel once the election is over.
but the grain have to stay in UA
Agreed. It is all about political posturing.
To take a stab at describing the political situation in Slovakia, as I understand it:
The social democratic party Smer – also described as left wing populists – is ahead in the polls. Their leader promises “not another bullet for Ukraine” and describes the war as starting in 2014.
The conservative party that leads the current coalition has lost support and might not even enter parliament.
Smer becoming largest is one thing, being able to form a majority coalition is another. With proportional distribution of seats and a fractured political landscape, much will hinge on which parties clear the threshold(s).
The propagandists did well to influence Alvin York from Pall Mall, TN to fight The Kaiser. Likewise The White Feather Girls of England.
Sorry folks, but I will be watching this generational slaughter from my front porch in Hicksville, Indiana with my hound dogs, bottle of hooch, bible, ‘snake flag’ and AR. Let the Acela sophisticates send theirs.
Ukraine is already a non-nation in the sense it can not survive w/o external funding from other nations, so for me it’s sadly comical in a sense that NATO nations and others act like it still is a sovereign entity (a nation) to be respected.
Zelensky himself increasingly has no agency or power…except…for the fact he can act as if he is an ordained hero fighting Satan who can lecture and shame other nations into showing him respect and give him $$$ and is sounding increasingly shrill so he’s running out of pretexts to lecture and shame. And that part is dimming. Even high ranking Euro-poodles have publicly stated Ukraine would go down the drain w/o Western subsidies.
If Poland and others really want to push their point about Ukraine grain, they might consider sponsoring a EU and United Nations resolution banning Ukraine exports including grain and food because radioactive contamination. It doesn’t have to be a fact based proposal to make a point.
If true will Amerika send troops for the M-1 tanks?
https://sputnikglobe.com/20230923/russian-reconnaissance-team-destroys-leopard-tank-in-special-op-zone-with-fully-german-crew-1113608814.html
You can bet that the Russians are doing full identification protocols of those dead tank crewmen – photos, fingerprints, DNA and anything else that they can think of.
No retaliation to be expected, of course, so it’s OK to send more German and NATO troops.
As with NATO’s armor, it is probably better kill NATO’s armies piecemeal on ukrainian territory instead of having to kill them all at once with the fighting far less confined, for as long as possible.
Are you saying that within the next 12 to 18 months NATO will run out of it’s rapid deployment forces somewhere in the steppes while the MSM looks the other way and blames Russia for the sunspot activity?
Maybe then it will be time to start the talks of the new European security arrangements.
Who says they were sent?. That crew most probably volunteered thinking of summer baths in Azov sea with lots of money in their pockets.
It’s likely these M1 tanks are the M1A1 tanks from long-term storage.
Nearly useless as a “tank” against a modern peer, potentially useful as mobile artillery.
Makes no sense to send American troops with outdated kit.
When was the last time the Amerikan govt. made sense?;-)
this is a battle for who will be queen of the hospital ward—- Germany has sepsis via its economic seppuku.
Poland was stage 3 brain cancer via its pivot to an unsustainable militarization which can’t be supported by its balance of payments and it will catch sepsis from Germany if/when the German export machine flatlines
long-winded way of saying both countries are stuck in a policy doom-loop
Poland appears to blame Germany.
Putin’s( or the Russian) demands were addressed to the US and NATO..
Not one mention of the US’ and NATO’s role by the Poles?
Why not?
This seems like pretty tedious stuff. Like the pesky details left over from the Cold War. And Ukraine became the new point of failure when it came to China and the BRI. There Ukraine sat, a corrupt no-man’s-land, the richest farmland on the European continent with two big rivers and three ports on the Black Sea. Not to mention its mineral and industrial potential. With a long border along southern Russia. Just think of the traffic. So naturally the West had to lock it down because China was pushing the Eurasian Economic Union. So we stirred up our old standbys – the Euro-Nazis – and caused preemptive national confusion that became a war against Russia outright and China less so. Curiously Germany has allowed China to dock in Hamburg, no problem, and refuses to cut trade off. So it looks like another attempt to keep China in check – only indirect trade perhaps, for Ukrainian grain and etc. I’d imagine one thing left out of the above report might be that a number of German “oligarchs” have invested in the ruins of Ukraine by now.
We still don’t know what the post-SMO/war Ukraine will look like.
It’s possible that it will be a poor landlocked nation at this point, with access to the Black Sea largely absorbed into Russia. Many Russians clearly want to absorb Odessa and the whole Black Sea Coast into Russia. That leaves Ukraine as a nation with no direct sea port access and a demographic catastrophe from the losses of so many troops during the SMO.
Certainly, the 4 Oblasts that voted to join Russia are a major loss – they are Ukraine’s main industrial manufacturing hub.
As far as Germany, they simply can’t afford to lose China. It’s a huge source of exports and increasingly, I suspect that German industry will not be competitive, especially with the loss of low cost Russian sources of energy. Natural resources could be another issue.
So this paragraph is bizarre.
“The upcoming elections on 15 October will play a pivotal role in this respect since the return to power of the “Civic Platform” (PO) opposition would end the ruling “Law & Justice” (PiS) party’s plans to replicate the late Jozef Pilsudski’s policy of remaining equidistant from Germany and Russia via a regional sphere of influence. If the incumbents win re-election though, even if they have to form a coalition government with the anti-establishment Confederation party, then they’re expected to largely retain this course.”
The reference to Pilsudski’s policy is rather ominous, given that the end result was the partition of Poland between the 3rd Reich and the USSR. I guess when both parties have absorbed you, you are equidistant from them in some sense.
Clicking through to the link claiming to show how a victorious opposition would “end” the alleged equidistant policy leads to no statements by the opposition but some strange rants by members of the ruling party about the “Putin-Merkel pact” and a present “German-Russian alliance” whose bidding the opposition allegedly does.
Since we mention the policies of Pilsudski, I’m reminded that he regarded the entirety of pre-partition Poland as legitimately part of the resurrected Poland, including the Baltics and most of Ukraine. While being hazy as to the details, his proposed “federation” is generally seen as a restored Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, in which the smaller fry would have but nominal independence. Efforts in this direction produced the Polish-Lithuanian war, the Polish-Ukrainian war, and the Polish-Soviet war, all in the space of a couple of years.
The only “equidistance” in Polish policy is that they hate and fear both the Germans and the Russians.
They continue to inflict harm on themselves with adventurist policies that greatly exceed their capabilities.
I haven’t been following the news closely, but I’m guessing that the notion of the SMO enticing/coercing Poland into a break with NATO may now seem a bit less fantastical?
Thinking that in Europe there’s something like a polish soft power is like delusional. It’s like believing that in Italy exists an extreme right that’s not atlantist (while all extreme right foreign fighers fighting for ukraine and leftist ones with russia) citing a very biased publication that show just how the european greens see meloni. But believing that Germany now controls Eu is completely out of the reality, while this country had become the sickman of Europe again. The plot of destroying a country through agriculture is uttlery ridicolus in the times of 5.0 industry. i don’t understand much of united states, but i see the problem is reciprocal, with Usa analysts thinking that the eu is a large version of the est europe, while downplaying the role of their country in european politics and not considering the strong ties within the atlantist leading classes. This can surely help to autoabsolve their country and to consider it not involved in european policies, but it doesn’t help to understand what’s happening in Europe and what will happen in the future, it just add confusion
UA needs money!
but, IMO:
first, the PiS is pis-s-ed, because USA, GER and UA wants tusk to win the next elections, otherwise the UA-membership to EU will be postponed, among other things.
second, PiS-elites know, that after the failed offensive the UA is big financial liability for PL, so they are pulling out their support. in case of a long war, the EU will further support UA, but a rebuilding will cost a lot more – z. spoke about 750 mrd $ in july, they don’t see any business oportunities in next years.
so their blame game comes about germany, the usual foe for pis, regardless of whether it is true at all, zelenski is not a puppet, but corrupt and in despair.
to the words of Polish President Andrzej Duda when he compared Ukraine to “a drowning person clinging to anything available.” I like to add, despaired persons do despaired things.
Russia/Ukraine may repeat the Christian Othodox version of the Islamic Iran/Iraq saga 1980-1988 when Sadam was our Zelenski in Bagdad and Putin was then named Khomeini.
So Germany is going over Polands head to prove they are a better US vassal than Poland? Lol
Germany is to blame always