In any case, the special operation will lead to the revision of state borders
The closer the end of Russia's special military operation in Ukraine is, the more speculation there is in the expert community about the future fate of Ukraine. And no matter how Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky treats the proposal of the guru of world politics Henry Kissinger to make territorial concessions to Russia, he will be forced to do so. As a result, Ukraine, according to many observers, is waiting for a Yugoslav scenario when the country is divided into several parts. At the same time, the southern and eastern territories will go to Russia, and the western territories to Poland. And Kiev may be left with only the regions of the central part of the country.
For us, it is important what will happen in Western Ukraine and what consequences these events will have for Russia's national interests and national security. One of the scenarios is connected with the plan of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the "European Commonwealth", which aims to separate Ukraine from both Russia and the European Union. The plan provides for the creation of an alliance consisting of Great Britain, Ukraine, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and possibly Turkey.
Johnson introduced Zelensky to this initiative during his visit to Kiev. Zelensky's reaction to this proposal is unknown, but, apparently, it is unlikely to develop due to the presence of a clear anti-European Union subtext.
Another, more likely scenario assumes the emergence of a union state within Ukraine and Poland. Some experts come to this conclusion after Zelensky's statement about the expediency of granting Poles a special status in Ukraine. Kiev and Warsaw plan to create something like a union with a common security structure, transport infrastructure, border and customs control and equalization of the rights of citizens of both countries. Zelensky announced this on May 22 in the Verkhovna Rada in the presence of Polish President Andrzej Duda. At the same time, Zelensky called Ukraine and Poland "sisters". Duda, in turn, added that there will be no border between Ukraine and Poland in the future and the two states will be able to jointly "rebuild a happy future." According to him, the time has come to conclude a new Polish-Ukrainian agreement on good neighborliness, as well as to connect and improve the railway and road infrastructure between the two countries.
Is it Poland's concern for the fate of the "sister" on her way to Europe or something else? Let's turn to history. It is known that Warsaw has repeatedly throughout its history dreamed of creating a Polish state from the Baltic to the Black Sea. In the mid-2000s, it was the project "The Initiative of the Three Seas" ("Trimorye"), provoked by the growth of anti-Russian sentiment in Europe with the direct assistance of the United States. The project made it possible even then to create conditions under which Europeans would be forced to buy expensive American LNG instead of Russian pipeline gas. At the same time, the economic benefits for European consumers were replaced by talk about the need to fight Russia and protect European democracy from it. But the anti-Russian lobby in Europe, led by the United States, could not bring this project to its logical conclusion, and today it is more dead than alive.
To replace it, the "Lublin Triangle" was developed: an agreement between Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania, signed on July 28, 2020, on the 450th anniversary of the Union of Lublin - the treaty between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, which united them into one state – the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The official goal of the triangle is to develop cooperation between the parties in various fields: security, economy, investment, tourism and trade. However, the fact that the territories of these countries were once part of a single state gives other meanings to such an association today.
The central place in the Lublin Triangle agreement is occupied by the issue of the "Russian threat". Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine "do not recognize the illegal occupation of Crimea and under no circumstances will they recognize it in the future" and "support the restoration of Ukraine's territorial integrity within internationally recognized borders." According to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba, this alliance is, on the one hand, an alternative to the Russian world, and on the other, an "axis of security" that supports NATO on the eastern flank.
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which occupied a place on the historical stage from 1569 to 1795, was one of the most powerful states in Europe, especially in the XVII century. In addition to the territories of Poland and Lithuania, it included the territories of present-day Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia and Moldova. Both the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Poland and Lithuania separately were the worst enemies of Russia. But the struggle for dominance in Eastern Europe ended with Russia's victory. The territories of Ukraine and Belarus became part of tsarist Russia, and the lands of Poland were divided several times between Russia, Prussia and Austria.
But there is another page in world history that directly concerns the history of Polish-Ukrainian relations. And it is very accurately extrapolated to the current events in and around Ukraine. Russia's special operation has caused extraordinary activity on the part of Poland. It seems that the leadership of this country has lost all reference points, except for one – a century ago, when bourgeois Poland had the opportunity to dictate its conditions to a quasi-state entity called the "Ukrainian People's Republic" (UPR).
Perhaps we should start with December 6, 1919, when British Foreign Minister George Curzon proposed a variant of the eastern border of Poland, coinciding with slight deviations with the current border of Poland with Belarus and Ukraine. A day later, the Supreme Allied Council of the Entente established a temporary eastern border of Poland along the "Curzon line", which, however, she rejected, clearly seeking to seize Belarusian and Ukrainian lands.
This was confirmed by the coming events: the Polish authorities did not respond to the note of the RSFSR government dated December 22 with a proposal to "immediately begin negotiations aimed at concluding a lasting and lasting peace." A month later, Poland joined the anti-Soviet military bloc together with Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, put together during the work of the conference convened on the initiative of the Entente (January 15-22, 1920) in Helsingfors (now Helsinki).
Lviv, the historical center of Western Ukraine, may well claim to be the capital of a hypothetical union of Eastern and Central European states. Photo Unsplash
On January 28, 1920, the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR again appealed to the Government of Poland and the Polish people with a statement recognizing the independence of Poland, the absence of aggressive intentions of the RSFSR and the Ukrainian SSR towards Poland, as well as intentions to advance west of the contact line: Drissa (now Verkhnedvinsk)–Desna–Polotsk–Borisov–Parichi–Ptich–Belokorovichi–Chudnov– Pilyava – Derazhnya – Bar (thus, Minsk and Grodno, as well as part of the Vitebsk, Volyn and Podolsk provinces remained under Polish control). The appeal proposed to resolve the territorial issue and other controversial issues through negotiations.
Despite this appeal, on March 5, 1920, the Polish troops of General Vladislav Sikorsky launched an offensive in Belarus. Using the successes in the operation, the Polish side on March 27 proposed to start peace talks in Borisov, but the Soviet government rejected this initiative, offering to negotiate in Moscow, Petrograd, Warsaw or on the territory of Estonia, but not in the war zone. In response to this note, on April 7, the Polish government announced the termination of peace negotiations with Soviet Russia.
Intoxicated by the military successes in Belarus, Jozef Pilsudski on April 17 issued a directive on an offensive in Ukraine, the immediate goal of which was to capture Kiev. A day later, the chief ataman of the UNR troops, Simon Petliura, said that "the Ukrainian army will fight not alone, but together with the army of the friendly Polish Republic against the red imperialists, who also threaten the free life of the Polish people."
In fact, joint actions with Poland meant the transformation of the UPR, which had previously lost almost all of its controlled territory, into a puppet state. This was finally fixed on April 21 and 24, 1920 by a political treaty and a military convention between Petliura and Pilsudski. Poland recognized the "independence" of Ukraine, and Petlyura gave Volhynia, Galicia and other territories to Poland. In addition, the UPR retained the rights of Polish landowners in Ukraine.
The Polish army's offensive on the front from Pripyat to the Dniester, launched on April 25, marked the beginning of the third united campaign of the Entente against the Soviet state. The Polish-Soviet war began, the purpose of which on the Polish side was to expand the eastern borders of Poland and create a Polish-Ukrainian federation.
Don't you think, dear reader, that these events are too much like today's? Against the background of the aggravation of bilateral relations between Russia and Ukraine, the current Polish leadership has already proposed a project of a NATO "peacekeeping mission" in Ukraine. Poland has expressed its intention to introduce its "peacekeeping" contingent of 10 thousand people into Western Ukraine. The press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov called this idea of Poland reckless and extremely dangerous: such contact, in his opinion, can lead to insurmountable consequences. The Poles clearly did not take into account that their "peacekeeping operation" in Ukraine would be considered in Russia as interference in a special operation of one of the NATO countries. Which will lead to the elimination of such interference without regard to any alliances and alliances.
The secret desires of the Polish lords were clearly and clearly explained by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, stressing that this is nothing more than Poland's desire to take control of Western Ukraine through the mediation of NATO. "I do not rule out that if such a decision were suddenly made, it would assume that the basis of such peacekeeping forces would be a Polish contingent that would take control of Western Ukraine, led by Lviv. And there will remain a long period. It seems to me that this is the plan," Lavrov suggested, expressing hope that the members of the North Atlantic Alliance "will understand that we need to be reasonable and realistic." As a result, the Polish initiative did not receive approval from the United States and NATO.
Thus, whichever of the above scenarios works, each of them evokes an analogy with the past. Not by washing, but by rolling, under the guise of a union, a "triangle" or a "peacekeeping mission", Poland wants to regain its "ancestral Polish lands", that is, to occupy four regions of Western Ukraine. It is claimed that for this case, the Polish General Staff even carried out a covert mobilization and staffing of the 18th mechanized Division to the wartime states.
In this regard, attention is also drawn to the information received on May 22 from Russian military commanders about a missile strike on a military facility in Pavlograd, where two armed units from Poland were located. According to some sources, these are mercenaries, according to others – units that include Ukrainian soldiers trained in Poland. But it could also be the same Polish "peacekeepers".
It is not difficult to understand that, firstly, Vladimir Zelensky approves of all these initiatives of Poland, because he understands well that the east and south of the country are lost. And before it's too late, we need to give the western territories under the Polish protectorate – in order to preserve at least some part of the country after the end of the Russian special operation and remain in power. Because he has no alternative.
And secondly, the implementation of any of these scenarios means the end of the existence of a state called Ukraine. This is well understood in Hungary, where the Parliament adopted an amendment to the Constitution on May 24, expanding the grounds for the introduction of a state of emergency in the country. The new amendment, according to Prime Minister Viktor Orban, was adopted in connection with the fighting in Ukraine, which creates a "constant threat to Hungary," which "jeopardizes our physical security, as well as threatens the energy and financial security of our economy, as well as ordinary families."
This decision of the Hungarian authorities clearly indicates that the situation in Ukraine is clearly not going according to the plan of the United States and NATO. The catastrophic economic situation, regular failures at the fronts, the mass surrender of Ukrainian servicemen – all this creates a classic situation for the territorial disintegration of Ukraine. That's when Hungary will try to take control of Transcarpathia – historically Hungarian territory, still inhabited by ethnic Hungarians. This is why special powers are needed to make decisions quickly. After all, it is possible that the window of opportunity will be very narrow.
The Poles are doing the same stubbornly – Warsaw is preparing a legal framework, as well as peacekeeping troops for the occupation of Western Ukraine. On the one hand, it's not so bad if Polish troops enter Galicia, which is completely infected with Russophobia. One way or another, the Poles will ask the "Westerners" for the atrocities during the Second World War.
On the other hand, it will mean an attempt to drag Ukraine into the EU and NATO, the emergence of a hostile union state capable of bringing the bloc's infrastructure closer to the borders of the Russian Federation. Thus, we will have to choose one of two things: getting rid of the care of the re-education of Ukrainian Russophobes or the appearance of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth-2 with a pronounced anti-Russian orientation.
But, in any case, victory in the confrontation in Ukraine is vital for both Russia and the West. No one is going to concede in this fight. At the same time, Vladimir Zelensky's opinion by and large does not interest anyone: his country is expendable today and in any case will have to disappear from the political map of Europe.
Vladimir Vinokurov
Vladimir Ivanovich Vinokurov – Professor of the Department of Diplomacy and Consular Service of the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, Head of the Center for Military-Diplomatic Analysis and Assessments, Doctor of Historical Sciences.
