Putin's Warning To NATO And Poland

Putin’s remarks, based on an intel briefing that he received, are being fairly widely reported. Larry Johnson has a very full transcript of Putin’s remarks, in English (but without a link), which I’ll borrow from. You can find LJ’s full post here:

PUTIN ISSUES STARK WARNING TO POLAND AND NATO

Putin, as is his wont, stresses history in his remarks. For anyone who knows a bit about Polish history, those remarks are revealing in a number of respects. Putin’s remarks are undoubtedly tailored to appeal to a certain Russian stereotype of Poland and Poles—a stereotype which, like most stereotypes, has a basis in fact. Well, Putin and Russia are engaged in an existential war, so one can understand Putin’s tactics. In line with that, and contrary to far more conciliatory remarks Putin has made about Poles and Poland in the past, this time Putin makes no attempt to address Polish grievances against Russia—grievances which reflect Polish stereotypes of Russia and Russians and which also have a basis in fact. None of what I say below is intended to suggest that either Poles or Russians are somehow uniquely wrongheaded. Revanchism is nothing unique to the Polish spirit. Hungarian, German, Romanian, Serbo-Croation revanchism is probably a short list. The real lesson is that the US, through the Neocons (especially, but not solely) has chosen to roil historic grievances regardless of the bloody consequences.

Like LJ, I’ll start with Putin’s bottom line:

Regarding the policy of the Ukrainian regime, it is none of our business. If they want to relinquish or sell off something in order to pay their bosses, as traitors usually do, that’s their business. We will not interfere.

But Belarus is part of the Union State, and launching an aggression against Belarus would mean launching an aggression against the Russian Federation. We will respond to that with all the resources available to us.

Note a couple of things. Putin says Ukrainians can sell their land to pay their bosses, if they wish. And he calls people who would do that “traitors”. For “bosses” I think, in context, we can read “Poles”. This is very insulting to most Ukrainians, certainly to Ukrainians in Western Ukraine, who hate Poles. Yes, there are reasons behind this bloody history—the point here is simply to understand the tone of what Putin is saying. Likewise, his characterization of Ukrainians who would sell their patrimony to Poland as “traitors” to Ukraine is a not at all veiled appeal to Ukrainians to reconsider where their role as proxies for Poland is leading—well, also as proxies for NATO, generally, but that’s certainly not what most Ukrainians will take away from Putin’s jab.

Note also what Putin says about Belarus. Later in his remarks Putin states: “It is also common knowledge that [Polish leaders] dream about Belarusian land.” I’ve seen commentary on the internet that disputes this, but Polish claims to at least portions of Belarus share the same historical basis as Polish claims in Ukraine, so there is no reason to dispute what Putin says. Putin, in fairness, does carefully specify “Polish leaders”, as opposed to Poles generally.

So, Putin’s bottom line is: Poles can feel free to occupy Western Ukraine if Ukrainians are willing to resubjugate themselves to Polish rule—if Ukrainians prefer Polish rule to neutrality under Russian overlordship, that’s Ukraine’s business because Russia isn’t going to expend Russian lives on “traitors”. But Polish ambitions in Belarus—where Poland supported the attempted NATO color revolution against Lukashenko—would be a casus belli.

But let’s look at Putin’s sketch of history more generally. In general it appears to me that Putin is attempting to speak over the heads of the political class in Ukraine and Poland to communicate directly with the ordinary citizens of each country. Overall he does this ably, although he makes at least one—in my opinion—serious false step.

Vladimir Putin: Yes. We should elaborate on what Mr Naryshkin has just said. This information has already appeared in the European media, in particular, the French.

I believe it would be suitable in this context to also remind everyone about several history lessons from the 20th century.

First of all, it’s noteworthy that Putin begins his history lesson so recently—the 20th century. On the one hand, that removes from consideration perhaps the most serious and understandable of Polish grievances against Russia. Those grievances have to do with Russia’s participation in the partition of the Polish - Lithuanian Commonwealth. Russia occupied not only East Slavic areas in Ukraine and Belarus, but also the Polish heartland, including Warsaw. Russia also brutally suppressed two Polish revolts—the November Uprising of 1830 and the January Uprising of 1860. The longing of a nation of no less than 30 million for national existence is certainly understandable. The domination of post WW2 Poland by the USSR could not help but remind Poles of the their national tragedy since 1793. Less understandable—and this is Putin’s focus, in my opinion—is the crazed desire of the current “Polish leaders” to advance once again to the East into non-Polish areas, to revenge themselves upon Russia.

Next, Putin pokes at NATO’s signal military failure, as well as rubbing the salt of proxy status into Ukrainian wounds—contrasting Ukrainian subjugation to foreign interests with heroic Russian defense of the Motherland:

It is clear today that the Western curators of the Kiev regime are certainly disappointed with the results of the counteroffensive that the current Ukrainian authorities announced in previous months. There are no results, at least for now. ...

Meanwhile, the commanders of the special military operation are acting professionally. Our soldiers, officers and units are fulfilling their duty to the Motherland courageously, steadfastly and heroically. At the same time, the whole world sees that the vaunted Western, supposedly invulnerable, military equipment is on fire, and is often even inferior to some of the Soviet-made weapons in terms of its tactical and technical characteristics.

...

People in Ukraine are asking a legitimate question more often: for what, for the sake of whose selfish interests, are their relatives and friends dying. Gradually, slowly, but clarity comes.

Putin moves on to ask, Exactly whose interests Ukrainians are dying for? and what motives lie behind them. Putin knows it’s the Neocons who are “stoking the fire of war,” but the Polish hatred for Russia is clearly what Putin has uppermost in mind—the refusal to come to terms with Poland’s new existence within new borders, resurrected on a firm basis for the first time since 1793. But notice that Putin is here speaking to the Polish population. He is telling Poles to reflect on where obsessive hatred of Russia—often used by politicians to gain domestic political advantage—is leading them. He’s not whining:

However, massive efforts are being taken to stoke the fire of war – including by exploiting the ambitions of certain East European leaders, who have long turned their hatred for Russia and Russophobia into their key export commodity and a tool of their domestic policy. And now they want to capitalise on the Ukrainian tragedy.

But then, again, he addresses Ukrainians. If Ukrainians once welcome the Polish military into their lands, “they will stay there for good.” That’s a clear reminder of the centuries of Polish domination that Ukrainians lived under.

In this regard, I cannot refrain from commenting on what has just been said and on media reports that have come out about plans to establish some sort of the so-called Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian unit. This is not about a group of mercenaries – there are plenty of them there and they are being destroyed – but about a well-organised, equipped regular military unit to be used for operations in Ukraine, including to allegedly ensure the security of today’s Western Ukraine – actually, to call things by their true name, for the subsequent occupation of these territories. The outlook is clear: in the event Polish forces enter, say, Lvov or other Ukrainian territories, they will stay there, and they will stay there for good.

And then Putin turns to a topic that will resonate throughout much of Eastern Europe, as well as in Russia—Polish ambitions to dominate its neighbors which, he says, are “nothing new”. And, in fact, Poland’s leaders in this current regime have gleefully accepted the role of Neocon attack dogs, viciously vilifying other European nations that don’t fall in line with Neocon doctrine. It’s not a good look and, says Putin, it’s rooted in Polish history—an observation sure to appeal to Russian anti-Polonism:

And we will actually see nothing new. Just to remind you, following WWI, after the defeat of Germany and its allies, Polish units occupied Lvov and adjacent territories that had been part of Austria-Hungary.

With its actions incited by the West, Poland took advantage of the tragedy of the Civil War in Russia and annexed certain historical Russian provinces. In dire straits, our country had to sign the Treaty of Riga in 1921 and recognise the annexation of its territories.

Even earlier, back in 1920, Poland captured part of Lithuania – the Vilnius region, a territory surrounding the present-day Vilnius. So they claimed that they fought together with the Lithuanians against so-called Russian imperialism, but then immediately snatched a piece of land from their neighbour as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

It’s worth looking at these charges more closely. An independent Poland was provided for at the end of WW1. The problem, as elsewhere in Europe where new nations appeared along nationalistic lines—sometimes for the first time in history—was to establish viable boundaries. In the Polish case the main difficulty was to establish the eastern borders. The so-called Curzon Line attempted to follow a reasonable approximation of the ethnic boundaries. However, many Poles favored a return to Poland’s maximal historic expanse, far east of the Curzon Line—in Piłsudski’s ambitious concept, an intermarium stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Those lands had never been Polish or Lithuanian and the local populations had no desire to be part of a new Poland. Poland was able, as Putin notes, to take advantage of a weakened Russia to ignore the Curzon proposal to seize extensive non-Polish lands, as this ethnographic map of Poland between the World Wars shows—with Western military aid:

It’s worth mentioning that, when the USSR partitioned Poland in agreement with Nazi Germany, that partition line largely followed ethnic lines, reincorporating Ukrainian and Belorussian and Lithuanian lands into Russia/USSR. Of course, the local populations were no more, in some cases less, favorable to this turn of events than they had been to Polish rule.

Now, why was Poland so eager to regain these lands in the first place? The reasons lie in history—these lands had for centuries been integral parts of Poland—demographic—there were still significant Polish populations, especially in the major cities of Lwów (Lwiw) and Wilno (Vilnius)—and cultural. These areas were essential parts of the cradle of Polish culture. It all turned out badly. Following the return of the USSR to these lands, Poles were subjected to systematic genocidal attacks by the Soviet authorities. Cf. Polish Operation of the NKVD. The death toll, depending on estimates, ran as high as 250,000. This was followed during WW2 by the atrocious Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, at the hands of Ukrainians.

To provide some idea of the Polish view of these areas, I’ll provide demographic stats for the two major cities, which are not atypical for many urban areas in these Kresy, or borderland regions—Polish and Jewish urban populations in a sea of Eastern Slavic rural dwellers:

Vilnius inhabitants by ethnicity

Before WW2 the Lithuanian population of Wilno never reached 3%. Poles were an outright majority, with a large Jewish minority. The Lithuanian view was that the ancestors of most of those Poles had, centuries earlier, been Lithuanian and so their descendants should learn to be Lithuanian again. No, I’m not kidding.

Demographics of Lwów

In Lwów prior to WW2 Poles made up roughly 50% of the population, with Jews making up another quarter to a third. Ukrainians numbered in the teens of percentages. By 1950 the percentages had shifted—Poles about 10% and Jews about 6%, and those percentages are currently less than 1%. The process by which that happened was not gentle.

I could go on, but you get the picture. Regardless of historical rights and wrongs—and, as is usually the case, the rights and wrongs lie on both sides—the Polish revanchist impulse is a big mistake and a potential new tragedy for the nation. The idea of revisiting the past to fix what went wrong is simply nuts. Why Poles would seek reunion with the descendants of the perpetrators of the atrocities detailed above simply escapes me. The murderous ideology of Banderism lives on in the Ukro-Nazi ideology.

Now, to anticipate Putin’s next remarks, which will surely be bitterly disputed by Poles, here’s a map showing Polish “population transfers” during 1944-1946. Stalin’s USSR simply rounded up the remaining Poles in the pink area of the map, over a million, and shipped them west to help populate the formerly German lands that were now transfered to the Polish People’s Republic. This map will also show the proposed boundaries post WW1. Note that there were two versions of the Curzon Line, one of which assigned Lwów to Poland:

This is another swipe that won’t please most Poles:

As is well known, Poland also took part in the partition of Czechoslovakia following the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler in 1938, by fully occupying Cieszyn Silesia.

Cieszyn Silesia was a disputed area, with a Polish minority on the Czech side of the border. Poland’s opportunistic seizure of the totality of the region has not been a good look for Poland over the years. There are all sorts of disputes about the “true” ethnicity of the inhabitants, which I won’t go into.

In the 1920-1930s, Poland’s Eastern Borderlands (Kresy) – a territory that comprises present-day Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and part of Lithuania – witnessed a tough policy of Polonisation and assimilation of local residents, with efforts to suppress local culture and Orthodoxy.

This is mostly factual, but it also communicates an Orthodox grievance as well—one which will be offensive to many Western Ukrainians. Most of the inhabitants of the Polish part of Ukraine were, and still are, what are known as Greek Catholics or Uniates—they are in union with Rome rather than with any Orthodox patriarch. That didn’t matter to the official Polonization policy of the Polish government any more than the Greek Catholic desire to remain in union with Rome matters to the Orthodox (another much disputed topic). On the other hand, any extremes of Polonization were pretty small potatoes compared to the systematic anti-Polish policies of the Stalinist USSR.

Still, Putin seeks to remind Poles that they have benefited from Russia—even from Stalin himself. And this is, to me, his serious misstep. He rightly reminds Poles of where misguided reliance on the West has led them in the past, but then he suggests that Stalin gave Poland a “gift” in the form of the formerly German lands in western Poland. In light of the history recounted above, to speak of Stalin as a benefactor to Poles is a big mistake—if one wishes to positively influence Poles:

I would also like to remind you what Poland’s aggressive policy led to. It led to the national tragedy of 1939, when Poland’s Western allies threw it to the German wolf, the German miliary machine. Poland actually lost its independence and statehood, which were only restored thanks in a large measure to the Soviet Union. It was also thanks to the Soviet Union and thanks to Stalin’s position that Poland acquired substantial territory in the west, German territory. It is a fact that Poland’s western lands are a gift from Stalin.

Have our Warsaw friends forgotten this? We will remind them.

The reality is, of course, that Stalin was not giving a gift to anyone when he did this. The transfer of these lands to Poland was in the USSR’s own interests. Poland, a compact nation of over 30 million people, was too large to be easily digested, even by the USSR. The transfer of these German lands made use of Poland by positioning Poland in perpetual conflict with Germany—yes, there are many Germans who openly espouse revanchist views. By placing the Polish border within 50 miles of Berlin, with a large Russian military presence (including the Kaliningrad enclave) and with a large and capable Polish military, Stalin was creating a substantial buffer against the possibility of a reunited and reinvigorated Germany led by the Western alliance. This wasn’t a gift to Poland as much as it was a gift to the USSR.

On the other hand, the truth of what Putin is saying should be acknowledged. It is the incorporation of these lands into the new Poland that makes Poland a truly viable economic entity. Putin could have made this point less offensively but still truthfully.

In his concluding paragraphs Putin returns to what I take to be his two main themes. First, that just as in the past ordinary Ukrainians are being betrayed by their political class—sellouts to foreign interests. Second, ordinary Poles are also being deceived by their political leaders, and being led down a terribly dangerous path. When supplies of Ukrainian cannon fodder are expended, Poles will be the replacement.

Today we see that the regime in Kiev is ready to go to any length to save its treacherous hide and to prolong its existence. They do not care for the people of Ukraine or Ukrainian sovereignty or national interests.

They are ready to sell anything, including people and land, just like their ideological forefathers led by Petlyura, who signed the so-called secret conventions with Poland in 1920 under which they ceded Galicia and Western Volhynia to Poland in return for military support. Traitors like them are ready now to open the gate to their foreign handlers and to sell Ukraine again.

As for the Polish leaders, they probably hope to form a coalition under the NATO umbrella in order to directly intervene in the conflict in Ukraine and to bite off as much as possible, to “regain,” as they see it, their historical territories, that is, modern-day Western Ukraine. It is also common knowledge that they dream about Belarusian land.

…

The Polish authorities, who are nurturing their revanchist ambitions, hide the truth from their people. The truth is that the Ukrainian cannon fodder is no longer enough for the West. That is why it is planning to use other expendables – Poles, Lithuanians and everyone else they do not care about.

I can tell you that this is an extremely dangerous game, and the authors of such plans should think about the consequences.

Overall it’s a fairly impressive performance—certainly far beyond the abilities of any Western leaders I can think of, off hand. Will it make a difference? Who knows. Poland will be having elections in the fall. The transformation of the country by the flood of increasingly unwelcome Ukrainians is becoming a major issue. The two major parties are avoiding the issue, but it remains to determine whether that will be possible. Poles will never reconcile to Putin at this point—my opinion—but his warning may prompt reflection on the direction in which the Neocon crusade against Russia has taken Poland.