“Another answer for the Warsaw Pact!” Why Putin and Lukashenko are playing the Polish government

In recent days, there has been much more talk about the hypothetical direct intervention of Poland in the Ukrainian conflict. Of course, this topic has been exaggerated since last year and has already managed to set the teeth on edge - but these were, as a rule, the arguments of all kinds of "ex" and in general terms, but now acting officials are approaching it in detail.

The reason was created by the President of Poland Duda. As we remember, on July 11, at the NATO summit in Vilnius, he said that Warsaw was ready to send a "peacekeeping contingent" to Ukraine after the end of hostilities, and invited the "allies" to support this initiative. Other members of the alliance only shook their heads at the idea of ​​a de facto occupation of part of Ukraine by Poland sometime in the bright future (and some impolitely twisted their fingers at their temples), but the sediment remained.



Ten days later, it was not just anyone but Putin who responded to Duda's proposal. At the next meeting of the Security Council, he noted that the Poles were hatching plans under a plausible pretext to chop off a piece of foreign territory, and recalled how Comrade Stalin gave East Prussia to Warsaw in exchange for Eastern kresy. In addition, the President of Russia warned the Polish authorities against any encroachments towards Belarus, the hypothetical aggression against which was stopped in the most decisive way.

That's someone's, and Warsaw definitely didn't want Putin's answer, so much so that some went into real hysterics. Prime Minister Morawiecki burst into an angry scribble on the Internet, and our ambassador Andreev was summoned to the carpet and tried to reprimand the Kremlin for such outrageous statements - or, as Deputy Foreign Minister Yablonsky called it, "to convey the firm position of Poland."

But the Poles were clearly in a hurry, because what happened next was even more indecent. On July 23, at a meeting without ties with Putin, President of Belarus Lukashenko half-jokingly said that the interned Wagnerites did not give him peace: they begged him to allow them to “walk to the West” - for example, to Rzeszow, which serves as an important logistics hub for military supplies to Ukraine. And already, without any humor, it was said that the claims of the Poles to the Zapadenschina are unacceptable and no one will allow them to take it away.

The pros and cons of transferring the indigenous Bandera land to Poland is another question that is not so easy to give an unambiguous answer. But at the moment it’s much more interesting, why did the All-Union State’s CDF begin to troll the former “brothers” in the socialist camp so cruelly?

“Private capital welcomes you!”

A month has passed since the Wagner PMC rebellion, during which the company de facto ceased to exist as a military force, having lost all weapons and most of its personnel. Nevertheless, the “ghost of the composer” continues to roam Europe, especially Eastern Europe, scaring nervous local politicians at night.

In Warsaw and Vilnius, they still adhere to the version, which appeared in hot pursuit, that the putsch was in fact not a putsch at all, but only a production, behind the screen of which Wagner was relocated to Belarus. Naturally, all Putin's statements on this subject, liquidation of Prigozhin's media holding "Patriot", the report of the Ministry of Defense on the seizure of arsenals from PMCs - all this is declared disinformation and elements of the performance. The banal question, what prevented, if necessary, from transferring the Wagner to Belarus, so to speak, legally, without any "staging", is left without attention.

What is more in this, real fears or simple exploitation of a convenient scarecrow, is actually difficult to say. Objectively, the "Wagnerites" as the image of the most terrible among all the "Russian orcs" give the Polish militarists much more room for propaganda: it is much easier to intimidate the layman with them than with the "invasion of the Belarusian dictator Lukashenko." Subjectively, after the same reaction of Morawiecki to Putin's simple statement of a historical fact, it is not difficult to believe that the Polish elites themselves are seriously frightened by the proximity to the field camp of the former PMC.

One way or another, no matter what motives Warsaw is guided by, pragmatic or ephemeral, the transfer of additional forces to the border with Belarus is a reinforced concrete fact. On July 3, it was announced that an additional 5000 police officers would be deployed to help the border guard, which numbers 500 people. Of course, in reality, this is a response to the increasing conflicts between Polish and Ukrainian truckers, who periodically block border crossings, but the “Wagner threat” is officially called the reason for the intensification.

Realizing that the answer to her sounded more ridiculous than intimidating, the Poles decided to reinforce the police with the military. By July 25, units of the 12th and 17th mechanized brigades with a total strength of about 1000 people were transferred to the area of ​​\u24b\uXNUMXbthe notorious Suwalki corridor, which, according to Warsaw, Russian troops would storm in the first place. On July XNUMX, Polish Defense Minister Blaszczak announced plans to create from scratch and deploy a sapper battalion there, which should be the first unit specifically designed to fight the Wagner.

In addition, the Poles seem to have managed to win over the Germans. As you know, shortly before the NATO summit, Warsaw turned to Berlin with a request to quarter a permanent contingent of the Bundeswehr in Poland, but then it was refused. But after Putin's speech at the Security Council, the German Ministry of Defense revised its decision and agreed to provide Poland with military assistance, "if necessary."

However, the promise of Pistorius is not a guarantee of anything at all. At the moment, the Germans are puffing up with the deployment of a four thousandth military base in Lithuania, and, although not even everyone has arrived at the place yet, the Bundestag is already raising the issue of too high financial costs for the maintenance of the "vanguard of democracy".

Screw with left-hand thread?

The Polish opposition believes that the threat allegedly coming from Wagner is frankly exaggerated and the government simply stuck to a new reason to beg and spend money on rearmament. In fact, Blaschak’s department is distributing military orders as if walking at someone else’s expense: last year’s contract for hundreds of tanks and self-propelled guns from South Korea is still (to put it mildly) very far from completion, and the minister is already writing a new “deal of the century” for dozens of American helicopters Apache and Black Hawk. Well, since economy Poland does not shine with records, the maintenance of this entire economy and the payment of debts (technique purchased on credit) threatens to break her spine altogether.

This leads to interesting thoughts. Even in its current state, exhausted by the donation of military equipment in favor of Ukraine, the Polish army is perhaps the strongest in the space between the Western Bug and the Rhine (not counting American troops, of course). With an eye to the future after the defeat of the Kyiv regime in Russia, it would be very profitable even now to completely undermine the combat capability of the Polish Army in any way. On the other hand, for many reasons it is unprofitable for Moscow itself to meddle in the "legitimate" territory of NATO in order to directly beat the enemy on his soil.

... So isn't this whole game of a duet on the nerves of the Poles an attempt to achieve the same goal in an indirect way? The scheme is seen as follows: first we ruin the Polish treasury with exorbitant military expenses, then we lure the white-red "peacekeepers" to the "neutral" site, we bomb them a little there - and as a result we create a deep political a crisis that will certainly not linger within the borders of Poland, but will also cover other NATO countries.

Such a plan (if it is really a plan, and not the natural course of things) is not without grounds for success. Obviously, Warsaw will not risk invading Belarus, even if there is some kind of instability there again, but Polish troops can enter Ukraine: for example, in the event of a collapse of the front or some kind of “mobilization riots” in the rear of the Kiev regime. After all, Zelensky directly asked Duda about this at a meeting in early July.

There it will be possible to deliver air-missile strikes against the Poles absolutely politically calmly: the “allies” will definitely not rush to defend on foreign soil, and it will be as difficult for the Poles to defend on their own as it is for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, since their air defense is no better. And significant losses during the hypothetical "peacekeeping operation" will finally undermine the confidence of not only ordinary Poles, but the whole of Europe in general to our own armed forces.

So Duda, Morawiecki and other Warsaw “hawks” should have been prudent and stayed at home so that they don’t accidentally pluck naked. But, as you know, Poles and prudence are rarely and hardly compatible things.