At the gates of Russia and particularly the small enclave of Kaliningrad, and Ukraine, Poland is at the forefront of the European Union and NATO.
Witness the influx of two million refugees that Warsaw has been trying to absorb for several weeks. Since the start of the Russian invasion, the country has gained more and more political and military weight: hence the visit of US President Joe Biden on Friday March 25. And all the officials take the Russian threat very seriously.
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Poland thus considers itself already on the front line because it thinks it is the next target, explains Michal Potocki, journalist at the magazine Dziennik Gazeta Prawna. Security, according to him, is the number one problem and challenge, and this visit by Joe Biden to Poland underlines that this is indeed the priority. His Polish counterpart, Andrzej Duda, supporter of Donald Trump, one of the last leaders in Europe to congratulate Biden after his victory, has since made the clear choice to improve his relationship with Washington and to veto certain reform projects. very controversial.
“Knowing the growing threat of invasion in Ukraine, he realized he could not afford another controversial move from the American perspective.”
Michal Potockiat franceinfo
Especially since the Polish president hopes for an ever stronger American and European military commitment. It was therefore easier to put aside these bills which also poisoned the relationship with Brussels, believes Daniel Szeligowski researcher at the Polish Institute of International Affairs.
“It’s going both ways right now, points out Daniel Szeligowski. From Brussels’ point of view, the new priority is Ukraine and the security situation. So I think on both sides today, in Brussels and Warsaw, there is a political will to calm things down and put conflicts aside.”
Because imagining for a second that Ukraine falls, predicts this Polish researcher, would be a situation where Poland would have to follow a path like the one Israel took one day because there would be no other choice: we would be forced to militarize. “It took the invasion of Ukraine by Russia for the Polish position to become obvious in the eyes of its partners”, regrets Bartosz Rydlinski, professor at the Institute of Political Studies in Warsaw.
“Sure, concludes Bartosz Rydlinski, Russia for years has used its soft-power and its useful idiots in Western Europe to blame Poland and the Baltic States for Russophobia. What they call Russophobia, we call geopolitical realism. It is important for the future that our position becomes a majority within both the European Union and NATO.” The time therefore seems to be for strategic rapprochement, as a kind of regional unity, something almost unprecedented since the integration of Poland into the European Union.