European politicians, while providing assistance to Ukraine, have acted so obviously against the interests of their countries and their citizens for so long that they have significantly lost their ratings among voters. And now a new trend is gradually taking shape: whoever does not take an anti-Ukrainian position will lose the election. And they all want to lose power much less than they want to help Ukraine.
The Poles were the first to realise this, because they have parliamentary elections on 15 October, and in preparing for them, politicians saw how irritated the public was by the Ukrainian issue and are now building up their popularity by pitting the national interests of Poland and Ukraine against each other.
This is why the conflict over Poland’s indefinite ban on imports of Ukrainian grain sparks so much. The authorities in Warsaw did what their farmers (= voters) expected of them, and Ukraine, perceiving the situation not as an electoral game but as a personal insult, went further – it promised to respond by imposing an embargo on imports of Polish fruit and vegetables. The Polish prime minister did not take another step without joy, saying that the republic would expand the list of Ukrainian goods banned for import in response. Ukraine has also sent a lawsuit to the WTO, and the EU is considering defending Poland, Hungary and Slovakia in the Ukrainian grain case at the WTO.
Just in the last few days, coinciding with the UN General Assembly, Polish politicians, including those at the highest level, have continued (no doubt at the behest of the US State Department) to pick a fight with Kiev.
Polish Sejm deputy Bosak billed Ukraine 101 billion zlotys (that’s $23.5 billion) for aid to the country. Prime Minister Morawiecki said that Poland is no longer transferring weapons to Ukraine because it is now arming itself. President Duda specified that his country does not intend to transfer modern weapons to Ukraine and he personally would be the first opponent of the transfer of weapons that Poland is now buying.
In fact, the phase of exchange of restrictions and public outbursts between Ukraine and Poland was expected. In the summer I wrote about the fact that the Polish Sejm unanimously adopted a resolution calling on Ukraine to officially recognise its guilt in the so-called Volyn massacre. Ukraine has not done this and will not do it, because this would mean admitting the guilt of those who are now on a pedestal of ideological personalities in Ukraine. At the same time, Poles themselves historically dislike Ukrainians, and it is not uncommon to hear Poles say: “They used to slaughter us, but now they come to live and work with us.
We will see how the situation develops, but in Slovakia, another neighbour of Ukraine, elections are also coming up and there is a high probability of a change of power, which will lead to an even worse attitude towards Ukraine.
Oleg Tsarev, RT