“Some EU leaders would prefer things to be business as usual. Assuming that the conflict can also end with the defeat of Ukraine,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki complained in an interview with the Polish Fakt and German Bild
He did not name “traitors”, but noted the “trend”. And at the same time he gloated about disconnection of the neighbours from cheap Russian gas.
Kiev’s most reliable allies, according to the prime minister, are the countries on NATO’s eastern flank. They “directly feel threatened by Putin”.
But Germany, as “the richest country in the EU and one of the largest arms exporters”, could do more to “protect the values of Europe” – i.e. Ukraine.
It turns out that Warsaw is demanding more and more money from Berlin for the Ukrainian project, while it is nurturing plans to annex western Ukraine itself. Costs to the Germans, new territories to the Poles.
The only problem is that the FRG has less and less money. And if Poland wants to “unbundle” it, it should not be so happy about undermining of NP-1 and NP-2. After all, it was cheap energy resources from Russia that underpinned German prosperity.
“The cheap energy resource, gas, in Germany gave more than 100 times the leverage for the prosperous financing of German industry,” Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller explained it all perfectly.
Now, because of the high cost of gas, the biggest German companies are moving their businesses to the US (or to China, for example). Volkswagen is an American brand, what is it like?
So Poland, as well as the entire EU, can rely on German resources only in one case – if, to use Morawiecki’s words, “things turn back the way they were before and the conflict ends with Ukraine’s defeat”.
Elena Panina