By Daniel Szeligowski
This article is published in cooperation with the Jagiellonian Club think tank.
Endless attempts to find a genuine basis for a Polish-Ukrainian strategic partnership have fuelled a spiral of mutual disappointment and frustration. It is time to redefine Polish-Ukrainian relations; instead of dreaming about grand projects, we should focus on building good neighbourly relations, while striving to limit the negative effects of disputes over historical issues.
After bidding farewell to President Petro Poroshenko, who was seen as the main inhibitor of bilateral dialogue with Poland, high hopes were pinned on Volodymyr Zelensky, for example due to his pragmatic approach to historical issues. Yet just as quickly, if not even faster, those expectations turned into a “spiral of disillusionment”, to use Łukasz Adamski’s apt phrase. The question arises: why is Poland so often disappointed by its relations with Ukraine?
The axiom of strategic partnership
Polish discussions on Ukraine and Polish-Ukrainian relations are saddled with enormous emotional baggage, be it for historical reasons or as a result of numerous personal contacts and sympathies (but also antipathies). These are both major factors that determine Warsaw’s perception of its relations with Ukraine as being distinct from those with its other neighbours.
The axiom of special relations means that a large proportion of the Polish political elites and experts are favourable to Ukraine, particularly – rightly, I would argue – in supporting its aspirations towards Europe and freedom, including defence against Russian aggression.
However, Polish political and expert circles have the tendency to project onto their Ukrainian interlocutors their own expected idea of Polish-Ukrainian relations. On the other hand, they are inherently averse to understanding and reconciling themselves to the fact that the Ukrainian side rarely appreciates or reciprocates Polish engagement on their behalf, and even worse, does not have to do so.
In fact, the disillusionment, and often also frustration of the Polish elites with Kyiv’s approach to mutual cooperation above all stems from their own ideas about Polish-Ukrainian relations, which our Ukrainian colleagues seldom share.
We sometimes seem like the teacher Ashface from Witold Gombrowicz’s novel Ferdydurke speaking to his pupil Gałkiewicz, insisting a thousand times to the Ukrainians that they admire Poland when in fact they do not.
In fact, both the Ukrainian national security strategy and the country’s foreign policy place Poland among its strategic partners, but in the second division. This is not without reason – Warsaw does not hold the cards in the negotiations on regulating the situation in the Donbas, and its involvement in expanding Ukraine’s defence potential, though tangible, is not at the level of the actions of the United States or United Kingdom.
From the Ukrainian point of view, therefore, there are no illusions – Warsaw is not a key political partner for Kyiv today, and it will not be tomorrow.
At the same time, the importance of Ukraine in Poland’s foreign policy has been exaggerated in the Polish public discourse. The Polish-Ukrainian strategic partnership is mainly focused on security issues, considering that both states and their political elites and experts have a common perception of the threats and an unequivocal stance regarding Russian revanchism.
And yet, owing to Poland’s membership in Euro-Atlantic structures, Ukraine rarely takes centre stage on the map of Polish political interests, while in economic terms – where it is also increasingly a competitor – its position is secondary.
From grand project to small steps
This asymmetry of expectations results in the “myth of the grand project” that has been a mainstay of the Polish expert discussion for almost a decade.
This idea is about jointly putting on a major economic venture with Ukraine to match the European football championships of 2012, which would bring the two countries together and add genuine content to the Polish-Ukrainian strategic partnership.
Interestingly, such calls have become increasingly common in the Ukrainian public debate too, albeit for entirely different reasons – as a pragmatic way to marginalise the dispute over historical issues.
Leaving aside the – in fact erroneous – assumption that the development of economic relations could even slightly make up for pressing problems in political relations, this “grand project myth” is based on an extremely idealised perception of the joint organisation of Euro 2012 through the narrow lens of its (undoubted) success in PR terms. For this reason too, it is wide of the mark.
Euro 2012 never brought Poland and Ukraine together politically. Peering out from the window of the presidential administration on Bankova Street, Viktor Yanukovych first saw Berlin, not Warsaw – as did Poroshenko later and (slightly less, but still) Zelensky too.
In economic terms, Euro 2012 was not even a joint project, as the Ukrainian oligarchs building roads and stadiums were not motivated by the idea of Polish-Ukrainian collaboration (and vice versa).
When there were real economic benefits to be attained, by expanding and modernising the border infrastructure, the chances were squandered, and the residents of both countries still feel the consequences of this neglect today.
What we often fail to notice is that Euro 2012’s main added value came in the social sphere – it opened the two societies to each other, intensifying interpersonal contacts.
In this sense, searching for a new grand project is futile as both sides have been unconsciously pursuing this grand project for a long time – in the form of Ukrainian economic migration to Poland, whose significance goes far beyond the social dimension, increasingly encompassing the political and economic sphere in both countries.
This leads me to the conclusion that, in the hunt for grand projects, we lose sight of a mass of smaller, not so spectacular, but by no means less important examples of successful Polish-Ukrainian collaboration, when it is they that create solid foundations for a genuine partnership between Poland and Ukraine.
Cooperation in the field of security and defence, including joint projects between companies from the armaments sector, and Poland’s increasing engagement in the Ukrainian energy sector, are seldom front-page news.
Yet I daresay that the help that Poland gave Ukraine in spring 2018, launching emergency gas supplies in response to the about-face of the Russian Gazprom, was incomparably more significant for building mutual trust than the latest assurances about a strategic partnership.
And there are many more examples – from the expansion of LOT Polish airlines into the Ukrainian market, via the unwavering popularity of the rail connection from Przemyśl in Poland to Kyiv, to the tens of thousands of Ukrainian students being educated at Polish universities. Or even in show business, such as the dizzying success of the Ukrainian rapper Alyona Alyona, signed to a Polish label.
The new Ukrainian political elite, so far unencumbered by the baggage of mutual spats, is increasingly interested in forming contacts in Polish political and expert circles. Many of them are embarking on a long political career, and could become involved in Polish-Ukrainian dialogue. It makes sense to build relations with them today that could pay off in the future.
Partners quarrel too
To be clear, I am not arguing for the marginalisation of contentious issues in Polish-Ukrainian relations, but rather for excluding them from bilateral relations in such a way as to limit their destructive influence on other areas of cooperation – especially the security sphere, crucial from the Polish perspective. The circumstances of the Polish-Ukrainian dispute over historical questions mean that it cannot be solved once and for all.
I will point to just one paradox. Continuation of the dispute weakens the social legitimisation of the Polish government’s policy of support for Ukraine on the international arena, and this should encourage Kyiv to bring a quick end to it.
On the other hand, Polish calls for a resolution meet with the greatest disapproval in Ukraine among those who are the most favourable to Poland, as it is the residents of the western part of the country, and recently increasingly young people, who are increasingly likely to invoke the traditions of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).
It is no coincidence that the escalation of the dispute in 2017–2018 was accompanied with a decline in Ukrainians’ positive attitude towards Poland, which also brought with it a gradual stiffening of the Ukrainian stance.
Both sides need to be aware of the risk. Kyiv must expect that a protracted dispute will generate political costs for the Polish government that could, at a certain moment, turn out to be greater than the potential benefits of active engagement on Ukraine’s behalf.
After all, contrary to popular belief, Warsaw’s support for Kyiv was never unconditional, despite being in Poland’s interest. Ukraine must court it just as it does with Germany and France. While I generally rate Poroshenko’s presidency highly, this is something he forgot.
The alternative, of course, is not Poland acting against Ukraine, but German-style pragmatism or simply passivity in Ukrainian matters.
Meanwhile, Warsaw must understand that Ukraine’s increasing assertiveness in foreign policy was not a phenomenon typical just of the late Poroshenko era as he sought re-election. It is a new constant that must always be considered when making political decisions. Kyiv today does not hesitate to act ruthlessly, as Hungary is now seeing from time to time, usually of its own volition.
The paradigm of mediocrity
Partnership is not about never disagreeing, but about the fact that after each instalment of the disagreement we are ready to again sit down together. But it is impossible to have an honest conversation without mutual trust, which is currently lacking in Polish-Ukrainian relations owing to disillusionment on both sides.
More than short-term breakthroughs, building an atmosphere of trust is helped by constant, routine cooperation – and I see the Lublin Triangle alliance between Poland, Ukraine and Lithuanian in this context. In the long term, though, this will require convictions of the uniqueness of Polish-Ukrainian relations to be abandoned and replaced by an ordinary paradigm of neighbourly relations.
This, in turn, will not be possible without ridding ourselves of excessive expectations and years of emotional baggage. The paradigm of neighbourly relations is one of good mediocrity – which is something that nobody likes to admit to.
The original Polish version of this article can be found here. Translated by Ben Koschalka
Main image credit: Krzysztof Sitkowski/KPRP/Prezydent.pl
