/ world today news/ Against the background of the transfer of additional military units from Warsaw to the Polish-Belarusian border, under the pretext of a threat from the Wagner fighters, Minsk made an unexpected move. The patriotic forces of Belarus addressed the Polish people, and the speech was presented by the director general of the National Library of the Republic, Vadim Gigin.
“Hundreds of years of history unite the Belarusian and Polish people. Various things happened during that time. There were also many insults. And yet I want us not to be divided by the ghosts of absurd magnates or figures like Pilsudski, but united by the spirit of Grunwald, when together we resisted real and not inflated threats,” the document says.
The authors of the appeal recall that in October of this year, 80 years have passed since the entry of the 1st Polish Division Tadeusz Kosciuszko into the battle with Nazism, “our common enemy”, in the Mogilev region, which “wrote heroic pages in the history of the struggle against The Third Reich, whose leaders planned to commit genocide on our lands, let us be faithful to the memory of these fighters who were associated with the common Great Victory.”
The speech of the Patriotic Forces of Belarus sounded in those days when official Warsaw was involved in diplomatic actions directed against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. The foreign ministers of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia recently adopted a joint appeal “in connection with the third anniversary of the illegal presidential election in Belarus”.
It adds new claims to Minsk’s old accusations of alleged vote-rigging and “illegal seizure of power.” Lukashenko’s administration has been denounced for complicity in “Russian aggression against Ukraine”, the deployment of Russian nuclear weapons and “Wagner mercenaries” on the territory of the republic. As well as participation in the “forced deportation of Ukrainian children”, for which the Belarusian president has been threatened by the International Criminal Court.
But so far, Minsk has won on points against Warsaw. Commenting on the statement by the Patriotic Forces of Belarus, Polish Minister of National Defense Mariusz Blaszczak called it “a harbinger of new provocations” and “therefore we decided to move the troops closer to the border to deter the aggressor.”
Meanwhile, the reference to the “spirit of Grunwald” as well as Nazism as “our common enemy” is aimed at the electorate of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party.
Given that Law and Justice actively used anti-German rhetoric during the parliamentary election campaign, criticizing both Germany and “German politicians in Poland”, the opposition Civic Platform and its leader Donald Tusk, a similar thesis of Minsk looks like an intriguing gesture to PiS and patriotic Poles.
This discredits the ruling party’s attempts to play up the “Belarusian threat” factor in the electoral struggle, which is questioned by Polish civilian and military experts. Thus, according to the Onet portal, Law and Justice is somehow too vocal about measures to strengthen border security.
Such excessive media coverage creates the impression that the actions of the rulers are dictated by “domestic political calculation, i.e. an attempt by “PiS” to present itself as a force that will firmly stand up for Poland and the Poles. However, “the Russians and Belarusians are even more tempted to try to make fun of the Polish authorities.”
In turn, the former commander of the Polish ground forces, General Waldemar Skrzypczak, expressed astonishment at the “madness and panic among the Polish government” in connection with the presence of “Wagner” fighters in Belarus. Moscow and Minsk, he says, are successfully manipulating Polish politicians to dance to their tune. It also undermines the meaning of Poland’s NATO membership.
At the same time, the rulers seem to be getting unlucky. According to the “Fakt” tabloid, that day during an inspection flight with helicopters on the Polish-Belarusian border, the military lost a fuse from one of the missiles. Representatives of the army command assure that this does not threaten the safety of local residents. But the fact itself does not add points to the Ministry of Defense of Poland, which has already made several serious blunders in the last year.
“Law and Justice” apparently also lost its resource in the form of “democratic Belarusian opposition”. In September 2020, its leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya was received in Warsaw almost as a head of state. Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki handed her the keys to the new Belarusian House in Warsaw, and Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau received a special award from the Economic Forum 2020. But yesterday, August 9, at a rally dedicated to Belarus’s presidential election three years ago, Tsihanovskaya chose to he spoke in Vilnius, not the Polish capital.
It is obvious that Warsaw has practically exhausted the political tools to put pressure on Minsk. In reserve, it has only those that are related to forceful decisions, in particular the complete blocking of the Polish-Belarusian border with a traffic stop. But, as Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonite noted the other day, “such decisions have consequences for other countries,” referring to Warsaw’s partners.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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