Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova published a detailed post about Poland on Telegram that’s worth reading. It’s surprisingly informative considering that she was so misinformed about Poland just two months ago that she strongly suggested that liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who’s been so close to Germany his entire professional life that conservative grey cardinal Jarosław Kaczyński once called him a “German agent”, is anti-German. She’s come a long way in such a short time.
Zakharova began by wittily sharing a scenario of foreign meddling in Poland that she then disclosed was precisely what Polish officials and other Western officials did in Ukraine during 2004’s “Orange Revolution” and “EuroMaidan” from 2013-2014. She importantly reminded Poles that “The ruling party and the opposition, which are currently at odds over their own Constitutional Tribunal, shared the stage with Ukrainian radicals.” Her final point was the most significant.
In her words, “What the Polish authorities are now experiencing at home as collapse and tragedy, trying to contain the situation from a bloody nosedive and return it to the legal framework, is practically the same thing they supported and blessed in their Ukrainian neighbors twelve years ago.” That’s true, no matter how “politically inconvenient” it may be for some Poles to remember it, since their ruling liberal-conservative duopoly meddled in Ukraine for the past two decades with impunity.
It was only relatively recently that the conservatives became critical of Ukraine, first as what cynics deemed an electioneering ploy ahead of the 2023 parliamentary polls that they lost and then earlier this year after Zelensky’s state-level glorification of the Volhynia Genocide’s OUN-UPA culprits, possibly also as a ploy. Pointing out their two-decade-long meddling in Ukraine is meant to get them to reflect on the fact that EU meddling against them in support of Tusk’s judicial coup is no different than what they did.
Two wrongs don’t make a right, but they do make a point, and it’s that the chickens have come home to roost in Poland in this case. To be absolutely clear, the conservatives’ prior meddling in Ukraine doesn’t justify EU meddling in Poland, nor does it discredit the conservatives’ domestic political cause in opposing Germany’s takeover of Poland by proxy through Tusk’s armed seizure of the Constitutional Tribunal with all that’s expected to follow if he succeeds. Zakharova is only reminding Poles of their past.
She’s not Polish-friendly by any stretch of the imagination, let alone pro-Polish, she’s just consistent in opposing foreign meddling. One can oppose both Polish meddling in Ukraine and EU meddling in Poland since what’s happening in Poland is no less consequential than what happened in Ukraine. While Polish meddling in Ukraine led to that country’s large-scale conflict with Russia, EU meddling in Poland could lead to a German-dominated European Federation that ultimately poses a 1941-like threat to Russia.
The outcome of Poland’s worst political crisis since communism, which is arguably the worst to happen in an EU state (if one discounts Brexit), has yet to be decided. Tusk’s judicial coup is being opposed by conservative President Karol Nawrocki, but Tusk has the backing of the EU, which will embolden him to double down. If the vote of no confidence fails due to members of his coalition refusing to defect, then Nawrocki will either have to concede or call in the military to stop Germany’s takeover of Poland by proxy.
