By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal
When you seem in danger of losing an upcoming election, one way of retaining support is by criticizing your historical enemies. But it didn’t work for Poland’s national-conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS) in the Oct. 15 parliamentary vote.
Though it won the most votes by far, it lost power to a three-party coalition led by Civic Platform (PO), the country’s largest opposition party. Its leader, Donald Tusk, becomes prime minister.
At the end of May, the government had instituted a commission to investigate Russian influence on Polish politics, a move widely seen as aimed at discrediting Tusk, who was accused of having been too friendly toward Russia and President Vladimir Putin while prime minister between 2007 and 2014, and making gas deals favourable to Moscow before he went to Brussels to be the president of the European Council between 2014 and 2019. The European Union has been withholding $37 billion in post-pandemic funds over what it considers the politicisation of Poland’s courts.
The PiS made attacks on the EU and Germany a key part of its electoral campaign. Tusk was also accused of being a puppet of Berlin, the very country which devastated Poland between 1939 and 1945. Anti-German rhetoric flourished during the campaign. In videos, the PiS leaned heavily on anti-German sentiment.
Polish Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski issued warnings about close relations with Berlin, contending that “the Germans look down on us.” He even cautioned that when it comes to Germany, Poland must not develop Stockholm syndrome, “where the victim loves its own executioner.” He accused Berlin of trying to turn the EU into a federal “German fourth Reich.”
Broadcaster TVP’s EU correspondent Dominica Cosic claimed on Sept. 25 that Germany (along with France) promised Ukraine a fast entry to the European Union “if Kyiv helps overthrow the current Polish government.”
So at the same time, Warsaw also began moving away from uncritical support for Ukraine. While Poland has been steadfast in its support for Kyiv, including taking in 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees, there have recently been cracks in the friendship.
The downturn in relations began with a dispute over grain shipments. Ukraine needs to export its harvest, and land routes are now critical because Russia is deliberately attacking ports on both the Black Sea and the Danube River.
The grain was supposed to move on to countries in Africa and the Middle East, but bottlenecks meant that much of it piled up in silos in Poland, pushing down local prices.
The PiS government responded by banning imports of Ukrainian grain and food products unless the shipments were transiting through the country non-stop. Kyiv responded by launching a lawsuit at the World Trade Organization.
Things worsened when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the United Nations General Assembly in New York Sept. 19 that Kyiv was working to preserve land routes for its grain exports, but that “political theatre” in Poland was helping Moscow’s cause.
In response, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told Zelensky “never to insult Poles again” at an election rally Sept. 22. Poland, he added, would no longer send weapons to Ukraine amid the grain dispute. President Andrzej Duda two days earlier had compared Ukraine to a drowning man who risks dragging his rescuers down with him.
There was talk of how Ukraine should be “grateful” for Polish support. Members of the far-right Konfederacja (Confederation) Alliance, a PiS ally, picketed the Ukrainian embassy in Warsaw and held up a mock invoice for Poland’s support that proclaimed the total cost of helping Kyiv to be over 100 billion zloty (about $32 billion) and wrote: “Paid: zero. Gratitude: none.”
This is a part of the world where historical memories remain strong. Poles remember when, during World War II, pro-Hitler Ukrainian nationalists hoped to seize all of Galicia, and when Ukrainian armed bands murdered thousands of Poles.
Between 1942 and 1945, members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) hacked Polish victims to death and drowned women, children and the elderly in wells in the Volhynia region of what is now northwest Ukraine.
Poland’s parliament on July 21 resolved that the massacre of some 100,000 Poles by Ukrainian nationalists was a genocide, with Kaczynski calling it “even worse than the German genocides.”
When a former member of the Nazi-organized Second World War Waffen-SS Galicia Division, composed of Ukrainian volunteers, was mistakenly honoured in the Canadian House of Commons Sept. 22, Polish Education Minister Przemyslaw Czarnek announced he intended to initiate action to secure the extradition of Yaroslav Hunka to Poland to be charged with war crimes.
Not forgotten either is that after 1945, huge parts of eastern Poland, including cities like Lviv, were grabbed by the Soviet Union, and kept, of course, by modern Ukraine.
So while the Ukrainian refugees in Poland have thus far enjoyed the sympathy and support of Poles, their situation is changing. A survey of Poles by the Washington-based Pew Research Centre published Oct. 2 found that support for taking in Ukrainian refugees has dropped to 52 per cent this year from 80 per cent in 2022. Konfederacja openly called for sending Ukrainians back to Ukraine.
We will see if this kind of rhetoric continues now that the election is over and the PiS has lost.
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