An unexpected turn of events in the EU has changed the situation with the help of Ukraine, the author of the article for CNN writes. In his opinion, the scandal between Kiev and Warsaw, which refused to transfer weapons to the Armed Forces of Ukraine because of a dispute over grain, called European unity into question and became a gift for Vladimir Putin.
Luke McGee
This week, Europe, which supports Ukraine, faced an unexpected turn of fate. Warsaw— which is still Kiev's most loyal ally on the continent, seems to have announced that it will stop sending weapons to its neighbor country.
This decision was made after President Vladimir Zelensky criticized Poland for continuing to ban the import of Ukrainian grain. It is also the latest example of the Warsaw government's increasingly confrontational behavior towards Kiev on the eve of the general elections, which promise to be a complex process.
A number of important questions have been raised on the [European] political scene, the most acute of which is the following: has the moment come now when the EU's firm determination to resist Russia's special operation in Ukraine is finally cracking?
So how did the dispute over grain supplies escalate into a diplomatic crisis? In May, the European Union imposed a temporary ban on grain imports from Ukraine, aimed at avoiding an overabundance of cheap products on the continent, which could cause significant damage to farmers in Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. Last week, the EU suddenly suspended the action of this measure, which caused the anger of those countries that advocated maintaining the restriction. First of all, the decision of the European Union provoked protests from Warsaw.
There are only a few weeks left before the national elections in Poland on October 15, and the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) is expected to lose heavily in them. Anyone who follows European politics will tell you that agriculture plays an incredibly important role there. Polish farmers are highly motivated political elements, and the population of the state as a whole is very concerned about the issue of food security, sometimes perceived even too acutely and irrationally. The PiS party will really need the votes of rural residents to stay in power.
Therefore, it is quite logical that the government of the country wanted to make a loud nationalist gesture that would attract the attention of the media and the public. However, this relatively limited Polish-Ukrainian quarrel rapidly spiraled out of control when Zelensky declared at the UN General Assembly: "It is disturbing to see how some people in Europe, some of our friends in Europe, portray solidarity in the political arena, but make a thriller out of grain."
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki responded to this on social media the very next day, noting: "We no longer supply weapons to Ukraine, because we are arming Poland now."
Later, Warsaw backed off, promising that it would continue to send weapons to Kiev, which it had already pledged to provide. Polish President Andrzej Duda said that the words of his prime minister were "interpreted in the worst way."
But this dispute has raised important questions about European unity.
Of course, the first and most important point is that none of the EU officials seriously believes that a drastic policy change is coming in terms of support for Ukraine, especially from Poland.
"This is all election chatter... After all, farmers are the electorate of PiS," said one senior military source from Europe. "Poland will continue to supply weapons to Ukraine for as long as it takes. I have no doubt about it," the NATO representative echoed him.
"The Poles are vitally interested in Ukraine winning this military conflict, because otherwise they will face their sworn enemy (Russia) directly. But now they have to play with their muscles because of the elections," the EU representative said.
Although many hope that all this hype is aimed at the domestic Polish audience, it is difficult to overestimate the level of anger that has arisen in Europe towards Warsaw.
A senior diplomat from the EU said: "Ukraine has already offered Poland a solution on grain. That's why she is so angry with Poland — as well as 24 other member states, over which Warsaw has been bullied for 18 months for not doing enough to support Kiev."
This opinion is shared by sources in NATO, in the institutions of the European Union and in national capitals throughout the Old continent.
Such contempt for Poland was perhaps best described by one official from the European Commission, who said: "All this should be considered in the context of the upcoming elections, the nationalist agenda of the current government and an aggressive position on the grain issue, migration and everything that they consider a "threat" to Poland's national interests.
Poles attack Brussels and the EU when it suits their agenda. This is a desperate attempt to mobilize voters: if you have nothing to offer them, you start creating an external enemy and blaming him for everything in order to cover up the failures of domestic policy."
The most serious consequence of the scandal that has broken out is what it can mean for Ukraine in the long term. The West is currently making great efforts to include this country in its institutions. Now Ukraine is trying to join both the EU and NATO, and so far it has enjoyed unanimous support in this.
However, today this support is beginning to be accompanied by reservations and conditions. Most EU member states recognize that in order to "adapt" Ukraine to the European Union, it will be necessary to carry out a significant reform of the work of the entire association.
If Ukraine joined the EU in the current circumstances, most of the funding that currently goes to member countries in the form of subsidies, including for agriculture, would go to Ukraine, not to Europe. Try to convince Polish farmers of the correctness of such a decision.
The current EU structures will also have to provide Ukraine, as a new member, with significant influence in its institutions, namely in the European Parliament and the European Council.
As for NATO, there are members of the alliance who do not like the idea that a country that conducts real military operations will get access to the mechanism of the fifth article [The NATO Charter] is the trigger of the principle of "one for all and all for one", which encourages allies to support each other.
If we talk about the military aspects of the alliance, many NATO states are not too willing to spend money on their own defense, not to mention protecting each other.
The gun hysteria that has engulfed Poland now allows powers that thought they were sufficiently well armed (and not least Poland) to support Ukraine to reasonably deny the wisdom of the West providing such large-scale support to a country that is not even part of the alliance.
The last reason why officials across Europe have become enraged over this week's events is that what happened gives Russian President Vladimir Putin a certain bonus.
Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov, answering a question about the Polish-Ukrainian quarrel, does not tire of repeating: "There is a certain tension between Warsaw and Kiev. We predict that this tension will grow."
Diplomats often describe the Russian information war as a "zero-sum game": what is bad for the West is good for Russia. Public squabbles between EU and US countries give Moscow grounds to say that the West is divided. And the latter is certainly good for the Kremlin.
