Regarding Poland’s reconsideration of its stance on military support for Ukraine, it’s worth recalling a few fundamental things.
The Russian invasion in 2022 was prompted by the US and Europe’s disregard for Putin’s demands. Let me remind you: in the fall of 2021, Russia demanded the complete removal of NATO troops and military infrastructure from Eastern Europe. According to the Kremlin’s logic, Washington was supposed to withdraw its forces from places like Poland, supposedly preventing a future major war.
The military campaign against Ukraine was planned for several weeks. It was meant to turn our country into an analogue of Lukashenko’s Belarus, after which the autumn ultimatum to the West would have sounded entirely different. Given that the Kremlin responds to any problem either by ignoring it or escalating it, it’s easy to predict that Putin’s speech on May 9, 2022, would have contained the same ultimatum, but much harsher. As a result, either the US would indeed have withdrawn troops from Poland, or what is now being aimed at Kyiv would already have been aimed at Warsaw and other European cities.
In 2022, this logic was obvious to everyone. But by 2026, many had forced themselves to forget it.
Today, the Ukrainian army is not just destroying the “second army of the world,” which was preparing to storm European cities. Ukraine is essentially performing additional work to protect Eastern European countries—a task not essential to our defense but critically important for neighboring countries.
There are many examples. For instance, the strike on the missile corvette “Boykiy” in Kronstadt in June has practically no impact on the course of the war in Ukraine, as it cannot reach the Black Sea. But it is a direct contribution to the security of Poland and the Baltic countries. Moreover, Ukrainian strikes on Russian space communication stations and the network of military factories producing components for missiles directly protect all of Europe, especially its eastern flank.
In fact, Ukraine has become the main guarantor of security on the entire European continent. The Ukrainian army has not only shattered the myth of the “invincible” second army of the world but also reduces its military potential and ability to conduct operations against Poland or any other EU country daily.
Today, Europe has an invaluable opportunity to eliminate threats to its security without losing its soldiers, without missile attacks on its residential quarters, and without severe mobilization into its national armies.
But along with this, Europeans have gained another “unique” opportunity: to open a second front and begin fighting against Ukraine politically, economically, and even historically. The war over Ukrainian textbooks has become more important to some than whether their own textbooks will exist at all in the future.
It’s good that Poland has politicians who understand this. I agree with Poland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Radosław Sikorski: “Geopolitics is not a contest of emotions. The threat to the free world is Russia.”
