Why Europe's furious with Poland over spat with Ukraine
Europe’s support for Ukraine faced an unexpected curveball this week as Poland – hitherto Kyiv’s staunchest ally on the continent – seemed to declare it would stop sending arms to its neighbor, CNN informs.
The move came after Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky criticized Warsaw for continuing to ban Ukrainian grain imports, and is the latest example of more confrontational behavior from Poland’s government toward Kyiv, just ahead of a tight general election in the country.
So how did a dispute over grain imports escalate into a diplomatic crisis? The European Union placed a temporary ban on grain imports from Ukraine in May, to avoid a bottleneck of cheap grain that risked undercutting farmers in Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. The EU suspended the ban last week, angering those countries, who vowed to keep restrictions in place, and in turn sparking protests from Poland.
Poland is weeks away from a national election on October 15 in which the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) is expected to suffer losses. Anyone who follows European politics will tell you that agriculture is incredibly important. Farmers are motivated political agents and citizens tend to care about food security, sometimes disproportionately and irrationally. And the PiS will need rural votes to remain in power.
It therefore makes sense that the Polish government would want to make a tub-thumping, headline-grabbing, nationalist gesture. However, this relatively marginal spat spiraled out of control on Tuesday when Zelensky told the UN general assembly: “It is alarming to see how some in Europe, some of our friends in Europe, play out solidarity in a political theater – making a thriller from the grain.”
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki responded on social media the next day, saying: “We no longer transfer weapons to Ukraine because we are now arming Poland.”
Poland has since moved to walk back those comments, promising that it will still send weapons it has already committed to provide. Polish President Andrzej Duda has said his prime minister’s words were “interpreted in the worst possible way.”
The first and most important point, however, is that no European officials seriously believe that there is about to be a dramatic change in policy when it comes to supporting Ukraine – especially from Poland.
Despite the expectation that this is all noise aimed at a domestic audience, it is hard to overstate the level of anger at Poland.
A senior EU diplomat told CNN: “Ukraine already offered Poland a solution on grain. Which is why they’re so pissed off at Poland. As are 24 member states who have been bullied for 18 months by Poland for not doing enough to support Ukraine.”
This sentiment was echoed by sources at NATO, within the EU institutions and from national capitals across Europe.
The most serious takeaway from all of this is what it might mean for Ukraine in the long-term. The West is currently making a great effort to fold Ukraine into its institutions. The country is currently trying to join both the EU and NATO, for which it has unanimous support.
That support, however, already comes with caveats and conditions. Most EU member states accept that in order to accommodate Ukraine, there will need to be substantial reform to how the EU operates.
The current EU structures would also give its newest member massive influence in the institutions, namely the parliament and council of member states.
The final reason that officials across Europe are furious about this week’s events is that it hands Russian President Vladimir Putin a propaganda coup.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, when asked about the spat, used it to say “there are certain tensions between Warsaw and Kyiv. We predict that these tensions will increase.”
Russia’s misinformation war is often described by diplomats as a zero-sum game: what is bad for the West is good for Russia. Public spats between the West makes it easy to claim that the West is divided, and a divided West is certainly a good thing for the Kremlin.