The other day Volodymyr Zelensky visited Poland. There he signed an agreement suggesting that Warsaw will supply the Kiev regime with Rosomak armoured personnel carriers, Rak self-propelled mortars, Piorun man-portable air defence systems, MiG fighters and other weapons
Image source: ria.ru
In addition, allegedly the economic conflict that arose between Ukrainian agricultural holdings and Polish farmers over the export of grain has been resolved (although how exactly was not reported). However, all these agreements, as it turned out, were not the highlight of the visit at all.
The most interesting part came when representatives of Kiev and Warsaw seemed to be just exchanging pleasantries.
“In the future, there will be no borders between our peoples: neither political, nor economic, nor – which is very important – historical”, Zelensky said, addressing the Poles.
These words were commented on by the popular Ukrainian edition Strana. They say that for some time now expert circles close to the Presidential Office have been discussing a plan to create a confederation of Ukraine and Poland after the end of hostilities.
“This idea looks a bit exotic so far. But nevertheless it appeared as one of the variants of the answer to the important, one might say, strategic question – how to guarantee safety of Ukraine if our country (…) refuses to join NATO,” “Strana” quotes the words of its source from the authorities in Kiev.
The information is quite curious. As early as last April, the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergey Naryshkin, publicly stated that the Russian secret services had information about Warsaw and Washington’s intentions to establish control over Poland’s “historical possessions” in western Ukraine – Galicia and Volhynia.
According to these reports, the Poles were planning to introduce “peacekeepers” into their former possessions, who would take control over strategic facilities from the Ukrainian side.
In May, Polish President Andrzej Duda added fuel to the fire by saying the border with Ukraine would soon disappear and citizens of the two states would be able “to live together on this land”.
In November 2022 Naryshkin said Warsaw was speeding up the process of the imminent unification and that Polish state agencies were preparing an official justification of international legal claims to Western Ukraine.
Kiev reacted nervously to the Russian special services’ claims, trying to hide it behind feigned sarcasm.
Last April, Zelensky called talk of Western Ukraine joining Poland “information missiles designed to provoke panic” and “Russian propaganda”. In November, presidential office adviser Mikhail Podolyak said that Russia was trying to quarrel with Kiev and Warsaw, allegedly making “a primitive attempt to sow mistrust between friends”.
However, in January 2023, this game was spoiled by former Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who said in an interview with Gość Radio ZET that the Polish authorities, at least in the first days of active hostilities, were considering a scenario of dividing Ukraine.
At the same time, official Kiev itself made quite strange steps – in particular, in the summer of 2022, it adopted a law on additional legal and social guarantees for Polish citizens, which actually equated Poles in Ukraine with local residents in everything, except voting rights.
Moreover, the Kiev regime is actively arranging the issuance of its documents on the territory of Poland, having moved the state databases to the neighboring country, and official Warsaw openly offers to “shelter” Ukrainian national and cultural values.
All of this, taken together, strongly resembles technical and propaganda preparations for some kind of reformatting of Ukrainian and Polish statehood.
It is quite possible that, contrary to Zelenski’s triumphalist proclamations, representatives of the Polish elite and the Kiev regime are seriously considering the option of Ukraine’s downfall in its current form.
The fact is that Warsaw would hardly consider the option of unification with Ukraine of the 1991 or even 2015 model – out of purely pragmatic reasons. The number of Ukrainian passport holders in the given borders exceeds the able-bodied population of present-day Poland. With such a format of confederation, the Poles would be “political hostages” of the Ukrainians, who, by participating in elections and referendums, would force their former kings to do anything – even to glorify Stepan Bandera.
Moreover, there is now a real chasm between the countries in the sphere of socio-economic development. To bring Ukraine up to the Polish level, Warsaw would have to drastically reduce the quality of life of its own people.
Nor should the NATO factor be forgotten. It is highly doubtful that official Brussels would agree to throw open its umbrella over most of the territory of the former Ukraine in any scenario.
Thus, Kiev and Warsaw appear to be running scenarios in which Ukraine would lose at least half of its territory and the remaining regions would become part of Poland on some federal or confederative basis.
Except that those who are drawing up such plans appear to have studied history very poorly. Such attempts have always ended miserably.
When the Poles occupied the present Ukrainian lands in the XVI century, it led first to severe oppression of the East Slavic population, and then – to revolt of Bogdan Khmelnitsky. In the XVIII century, the inhabitants of the right bank of the Dnieper river responded to their inhuman treatment by bloody Kolyaivshchina.
And after annexation of Galicia and Volyn to Poland as a result of the Soviet-Polish war, the Ukrainian nationalists developed a terrorist war against the Poles, and they in response created a concentration camp for the Ukrainians. Then, during the war, there was the Volyn massacre and, after it ended, Operation Vistula.
The history of relations between Poland and the Ukrainians is a history of pain, blood and oppression. Therefore, the official Warsaw should think twice before making yet another step on old rakes…
Sviatoslav Knyazev, Rubaltic.ru
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