Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski made headlines again shortly after he claimed that European NATO would “defeat Russia quite quickly” if they went to war. This time he said that Russian hybrid actions against Europe had become “kinetic” as proven by recent drone and missile incidents. He then declared that “Russia is clearly escalating; Russia is at war with Europe.” Sikorski’s dramatic conclusion importantly followed European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s annual address.
It was recently explained that “Von Der Leyen’s Defense Plans Place Europe On The Path To War With Russia” as a result of optimizing the bloc’s military decision-making processes and expanding its influence over non-members like Ukraine, which will be part of a new European Security Council. Moreover, the aforementioned members will have Article 4 rights to call emergency meetings whenever they feel threatened, and the EU will continue the de facto merger of its defense industry with Ukraine’s.
Sikorski concluded that “Russia is at war with Europe” the day after her address, which coincided with the date when Poles remember what most of them consider having been the 1939 Soviet invasion that Moscow insists was to liberate oppressed East Slavs after the government fled abroad. On that same day, liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned that “the most likely scenario” in the coming future is that Russia carries out drone or missile strikes against Poland, which it’ll claim were “accidents”.
Practically on cue, and some Poles cynically suspect that it was a preplanned overreaction for dramatic effect, air sirens rang out in the eastern Polish cities of Lublin and Rzeszów after another Russian precision strike against Ukrainian targets on the border. It was foreseen here after the first-ever such one against railway infrastructure last week that more might follow so this wasn’t surprising. Nevertheless, it lent the perception of false credence to Tusk’s warning earlier this spring of a Russian attack “in months”.
Going even further with his fearmongering, Tusk claimed to have received a report from the CIA chief warning about Russian attacks on Poland, yet conservative President Karol Nawrocki’s foreign policy spokesman accused him of pushing “a fabricated lie to electrify public opinion”. He didn’t elaborate on the goal, but Tusk’s announcement that Poland just joined Ukraine’s “anti-ballistic missile coalition” and Sikorski’s lobbying for Poland to intercept Russian projectiles over Ukraine hint at what they want.
Poland hasn’t attempted this yet because prior conservative President Andrzej Duda and his successor Nawrocki have the final say as commander-in-chief. For as much as Nawrocki despises Russia as proven by his recent use of an ethno-national slur to refer to its people, he won’t risk Poland’s existence by authorizing such a dramatic escalation against Russia. The ruling liberal coalition is less cautious, however, and they might thus collude with Ukraine to concoct a false flag for manipulating him into this.
Their recent messaging might thus be an effort to precondition the public into accepting this escalation. In parallel, they might be working behind the scenes to game out scenarios with their European NATO allies depending on Russia’s response, but all that’s irrelevant if the US doesn’t want to get involved. From the looks of it, Trump doesn’t want to risk a possibly uncontrollable escalation, so Nawrocki – who defers to the US like Tusk defers to Germany – is unlikely to authorize this no matter what might happen.
