Issued on: 14/02/2023 - 19:58
Former Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who served
10 years in prison on tax and fraud charges that many believe were politically
motivated, spoke to FRANCE 24 from London, where he now lives in exile.
Khodorkovsky said that while a "direct confrontation with NATO" was
not part of Russian President Vladimir Putin's plan, Putin will be emboldened
enough if Russia succeeds in Ukraine that NATO borders will "no longer be
an obstacle" to his ambitions.
Khodorkovsky – once Russia's richest man and the
founder of Open Russia, an alliance of progressive Russians –
said Putin has no choice but to see the invasion of Ukraine through
to the end to satisfy his political base of "patriotic
nationalists".
"I am convinced that Putin cannot stop," he
said.
With Western help, Kyiv could "crush Putin",
Khodorkovsky said. And defeated, the Russian president would likely lose his
hold on the country.
"Russian society is deeply marred by propaganda,"
he said. "But support for the war should not be overestimated."
Only about 30 percent of Russians support the war,
Khodorkovsky said. Another 50 percent simply "don't want to question
orders".
"But if Putin were to face military defeat, then
everyone would turn against him. And he knows that."
Click on the player above to watch the complete
interview.
‘We
will be in danger if Russia wins’: Security concerns drive Poland’s support for
Ukraine
Issued
on: 11/02/2023 - 06:44
5 min
The war in Ukraine has conferred a new importance to the Baltic
States and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe geographically closest
to Russia – particularly Poland. Warsaw is determined to learn from Poland's own
history and help Ukraine win the war.
Since Russia
invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Poland has been
living with the consequences: 8 million Ukrainians have crossed the border into
Polish territory since last February and the majority of NATO assistance is
delivered through Poland, which shares a 535-kilometre-long border with
Ukraine. With the prospect of a new Russian spring offensive in Ukraine on
everyone’s mind, Poland is acting as if it is preparing for a war.
If Poland’s
support for Ukraine has been seemingly limitless, it comes from a deeply rooted
belief that if Russia is not defeated, Poland itself will become a target.
Security concerns have led Poland to modernize its army and boost its defence spending to up to
4 percent of its GDP this year, the highest percentage among all NATO
countries, according to Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.
“If we don’t
support Ukraine now, there will be new targets for [Vladimir] Putin,”
said Paweł Jabłoński, the Polish deputy minister for foreign affairs.
“A Russian politician recently suggested that Russia should ‘denazify’ six more
countries after Ukraine, including Poland. What we do now, we do out of
solidarity and in support of the victims.”
“The opinion throughout Polish society is that if Russia succeeds
in Ukraine by claiming territory, whether in Kherson or Zaporizhzhia,
there will be the next war, and another after that…,”
said Łukasz Jankowski, a political journalist who covers the Polish
Parliament. “The feeling is that our basic safety and our independence will be
in danger if Russia wins.”
The
threat from Belarus
Another fear is
that Russian troops would combine the territories wrested away from Ukraine and
“create a government like the one in Minsk”, said Jankowski. Following the
break-up of the Soviet Union, an international treaty between Russia and
Belarus signed in 1997 by Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Belarusian
President Alexander Lukashenko created the basis for a union between the two
former Soviet republics. Both countries maintained their independence but
Lukashenko has always supported Russia’s military initiatives without directly
taking part in them.
Should the war in Ukraine drag on, some in Eastern Europe fear
Russia could eventually aim for the Baltic States. “This war is not over the
territory of Ukraine but over the independence of Eastern Europe. That is why
we must support Ukraine and there should not be any limits to this help,” said
Jankowski.
Poland’s
support for Ukraine has been especially forthcoming when it comes to the
country's humanitarian response. Poland began to see increasing numbers of Ukrainians in 2014, the year the
conflict effectively started with Russia's takeover of Crimea. “We opted for a
very simple way of permitting them to work,” said Jabłoński.
Following the
Russian invasion last year, a massive influx of 8 million refugees crossed the
border into Poland, though many eventually went on to Romania and Moldova while
others returned home. Recent arrivals have brought the total number of
Ukrainians living in Poland to 3.37 million people. “In every Polish city, you can meet
someone from Ukraine. There was never any ghettoization. Their integration was
virtually seamless and today Ukrainians make up 8 percent of the total
population in Poland,” said Jabłoński.
A
shared history not without dark episodes
“Many Poles who
take Ukrainian refugees into their homes see Ukraine as a very new nation, and
they consider the relationship between Poland and Ukraine as a brotherhood,”
said Jankowski. The history between the two countries is not without dark
episodes. During the Second World War, Poles were the victims of ethnic cleansing by Ukrainian nationalists, while Poles
forcibly deported thousands of Ukrainians. Decades later, former Polish
president Aleksander Kwaśniewski and his Ukrainian counterpart
Leonid Koutchma led a historic and formal Polish-Ukrainian
reconciliation beginning in 1995.
The strong bond between the two countries comes from similar
languages and a shared history. In 1997, Ukraine and Poland had a no-visa
regime. The experience of Ukrainians in a large, Slavic country with
functioning public institutions and a free market helped drive calls for reform
in Ukraine, wrote the historian Timothy Snyder in his book “The
Construction of Nations”. At the turn of the century, Poland resisted pressure
from the European Union to end its visa-free regime with Ukraine, asserting its
right to fulfill its obligations once its adhesion to the EU became official.
Once Poland joined the EU, its special arrangements with Ukraine came to an
end.
While Poland
has set a model in terms of welcoming refugees from Ukraine, its hospitality
towards refugees from other countries has been debatable. A report from Amnesty International detailed
Poland’s “selective solidarity” of welcoming Ukrainians fleeing the war and
refusing entry to other refugees, principally from Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan,
who were attempting to enter Poland through the border with Belarus.
Is there an element of self-interest in Poland’s extensive help to
Ukraine? Polish Vice-Minister for Foreign
Affairs Jabłoński wrote off the idea, claiming instead that the
number one priority was to defend Ukraine and Central European states from a
resurgent Russia. “In 2021, Russia demanded NATO to withdraw from Central
Europe. If our international position grows while we are helping Ukraine win
the war, we would be glad,” he explained.
“If Germany had taken a stronger position for Ukraine, we wouldn’t
have had to take on this role. I wish we didn’t have to take on this role,”
said Jabłoński, while citing the power imbalance between Central Europe
and Western Europe, whose citizens often have the top leadership positions in
European institutions.
‘We
want to strengthen NATO and be a driving force within it’
An opportunity for developing Central Europe's role would be
through a future Polish-Ukrainian Treaty, which could be signed in the upcoming
weeks or months. Comparing it to the Élysée Treaty between France and
Germany, Jabłoński said it would be a wide security, cultural and economic
agreement. The treaty would “certainly not” be an alternative to NATO. “We want
to strengthen NATO and be a driving force within it,” said the deputy foreign
minister.
When it comes to integrating Ukraine into the European Union,
Polish leaders and observers are under no illusion. “We know corruption exists
within the Ukrainian administration, but Poland [which joined the European
Union in 2004] can help with its know-how,” said Jankowski.
With the enlargement of the EU, citizens from Russia, Belarus and
Ukraine found themselves materially and symbolically separated from “Europe”,
according to Snyder, who noted that the hard border may have been helpful to
authoritarian rulers like Lukashenko. By helping Ukraine, Poland is considering
“lessons that were repeated in the past”, said Jabłoński, “because otherwise
we could be victims again”.
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20230211-we-will-be-in-danger-if-russia-wins-security-concerns-drive-poland-s-support-for-ukraine
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