Ukraine has our full support says Poland as it calls for “tough sanctions” on Russia

In response to yesterday’s decision by Russia to recognise Ukraine’s separatist regions and send a “peacekeeping” force, Polish president Andrzej Duda has assured his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky of Poland’s “full and cross-party support” for Kyiv in its “fight against the Kremlin’s aggression”.

Duda called on the European Union and NATO to introduce “tough sanctions” on Moscow. Similar appeals were issued by Poland’s prime minister and defence minister, with the latter saying that a “weak” Western response to Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014 had led to today’s situation.

Meanwhile, the Polish sports minister has suggested that a World Cup qualifying playoff football match between Poland and Russia scheduled for next month should not take place in Moscow.

Following a conversation with Zelensky, Duda tweeted after midnight that the “inviolability of borders is one of the fundamental norms of international law for us”. As such, Ukraine had Poland’s full support and Russia should be hit by sanctions from the EU and NATO, he added.

Earlier in the evening, after Vladimir Putin had announced his decision on Ukraine’s rebel-held territories, Duda had accused the “Russian president [of] undermining the established European order”. He warned that “only a tough stance and political defence of Ukraine can stop the aggressor”.

Meanwhile, Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said that Russia’s actions yesterday were a “rejection of dialogue and blatant violation of international law”.

“It is an act of aggression that must be met with [an] unequivocal response and immediate sanctions,” Morawiecki wrote on Twitter. “It is the only language Putin understands.” He called for an “urgent meeting” of the European Council.

Duda also today called an emergency meeting of the National Security Bureau (BBN), which began at 10 a.m. with the participation of the prime minister as well as the heads of the defence, interior and foreign ministries.

The head of the BBN, Paweł Soloch, said that Poland was in “constant contact” with Ukraine and was also “monitoring the situation” in terms of the security of Polish citizens. Poland will “closely coordinate” its activities with the EU and NATO, he added.

Speaking to fellow EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Tuesday, Poland’s chief diplomat Zbigniew Rau said that the structure of NATO had to be refitted to the new situation and warned that the “new normal” had the hallmarks of the Cold War, reports Onet.

The defence minister, Mariusz Błaszczak, also confirmed on Polish Radio this morning that Russian forces had entered the territory of the self-proclaimed breakaway republics, amounting to a violation of Ukraine’s borders.

He said that Poland expected “serious, not symbolic” sanctions against Russia, which would be the only way to “stop the reconstruction of the Russian empire”.

Błaszczak also criticised the West’s reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 as “quite weak”. “That is why today we have the next stage,” he noted, citing the late President Lech Kaczyński’s words: “Today Georgia, tomorrow Ukraine, and then the Baltic states and Poland.”

Meanwhile, the sports minister, Kamil Bortniczuk, said that western measures should also extend to Russian sports, including large football events organised by UEFA and FIFA.

“I have no doubts that the sanctions should also apply to Russian sport, which Putin absolutely uses for political purposes,” Bortniczuk tweeted. He noted that sponsors of large sporting events included Russian state energy giant Gazprom, which “finances Russia’s military activity”.

Bortniczuk later told Polish Radio that he believes Poland’s national football team should not go to Moscow for a World Cup qualification playoff on 24 March. He called for the match to instead be played on “neutral ground”, but clarified that this was a “personal opinion”.

In other developments, on Monday three US senators – Democrats Jeanne Shaheen, Chris Coons  and Dick Durbin – travelled to Poland to discuss recent Russian aggression toward Ukraine with Polish officials, including Duda and Błaszczak, reports The Hill.

Today, the US announced that it was relocating its embassy staff from Ukraine to Poland due to the security situation. But it added that staff would “regularly return” to Lviv – the largest Ukrainian city near the Polish border – to provide diplomatic services.

Also on Tuesday, the EU’s commissioner for home affairs, Ylva Johansson, will be in Warsaw to discuss the situation on the border with Belarus and “various scenarios” concerning the conflict in Ukraine. She will meet interior minister Mariusz Kamiński as well as representatives of NGOs.

In response to the events in Ukraine, on Monday evening Poland raised its cybersecurity alert status to the second highest level, CHARLIE-CRP, meaning there is information about a probable planned attack.

Main image credit: Krzysztof Sitkowski/KPRP

Maria Wilczek

Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.