«Russia’s hybrid war in Europe began before 2014»

“Russia’s hybrid war against us began before 2014,” he explains Paweł Kowal MP of Civic Platform, the center-right party of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, which is part of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Polish Chamber. Kowal says there have already been attempts to sabotage his country’s critical infrastructure. According to the deputy, Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin “is preparing for a conflict”: Europe and the West should take countermeasures against “revisionism” and the “new national-populist Comintern” while there is still time.

What should Kiev’s allies do at this stage?
«
The security of Ukraine is, in fact, the security of all of Europe. I follow the data on how Russia is preparing for war. These are preparations for a conflict with the West, not just NATO. Stop fooling yourself. We will only be able to sleep peacefully if Russia loses this war. What we must do is strengthen the potential of European nations and NATO and, on this basis, build new synergies with the United States. Otherwise we won’t make it. Both we and the US must support Kiev by sending weapons and work to allocate frozen Russian assets to the purchase of weapons and then to the reconstruction of Ukraine, so that any potential aggressor thinks twice before trying to change the borders by force. Europe must also invest in the defense sector. It is cheaper to do it now than to fight a war with Russia in a few years.”

The Financial Times has recently documented the sabotage orchestrated by Russia in Europe. Has Poland suffered any?
«Many think that the hybrid war against us began in 2014, but there are credible reasons to believe that Moscow has been waging it since at least the 2008 attack on Georgia. Incidentally, the first attack on Georgia occurred in 1992. The Kremlin did not hesitate to bribe European politicians, as demonstrated by the projects for the construction of the Nordstream gas pipeline. Today, our cybersecurity experts continue to block Russian attacks on our critical infrastructure, such as railroads and power plants. Every day, disinformation specialists encounter attempts to sow discord and influence the processes of decision making in EU member states. The latter were directed against Czech and German parties. All this is to weaken European support for Ukraine.”

When Putin announces a new “nuclear military exercise”, as he has done in recent days, is it worth worrying?
«Fear is the weapon with which Putin begins. So, first of all, let’s arm ourselves but without being afraid. Of course, every time Russia rattles the saber of its nuclear arsenal, the security situation in Europe worsens. In this sense, the official transfer of atomic warheads to Królewiec and Belarus weakened our security. Russia has almost entirely dismantled the system of trust between nations that was created during the Cold War and improved after its conclusion. In this way, Putin took Russia out of the club of serious countries.”

Do you think Putin could be aiming for an escalation on NATO’s eastern flank?
«Here Russia continues to move below the threshold of a conflict. Nonetheless, the reality is this: airspace violations, online cyberattacks and cyberattacks. The specter of war haunts the region. This is why Prime Minister Donald Tusk spoke of a “pre-war period” in Europe. Since 2021, with the help of the Belarusian regime, Moscow has conducted a hybrid operation against the European Union, speculating on the suffering of people from Middle Eastern or Asian countries to exert artificial migratory pressure on Poland’s borders , Lithuania and Finland. The aim is to destabilize societies in the EU and create chaos. Right now, NATO battlegroups are deployed on the eastern flank, ready for action. At this stage it is enough to dissuade Russia, but in politics nothing lasts forever. We must also prepare for negative scenarios.”

Putin habitually engages in historical revisionism about Poland and the Baltic republics: is it just propaganda or a threat about his next moves?
«The essence of Putin’s policy is revisionism. First of all about borders. Putin is imitated by Viktor Orbán (the Hungarian prime minister, ed) which within the EU serves Hungarian interests with the subtext of border revision, if there is an opportunity. It’s a terrible scenario for Poland. This is why we are determined to fight Putin and his counterparts in Europe, the new populist-nationalist Comintern. Putin reasons like Stalin: the source of his power is a falsified history. He is another face of revisionism. It serves him to cover up the truth, inconvenient for him, that Russia is the last European empire based on brute force and that it has never developed an attractive development model from an economic or cultural point of view. All empires collapse if they fail to reinvent themselves, and his idea for Russia is to oppress its own society, tolerate the corruption of the secret services and attack neighboring countries. A modern state cannot be founded on this.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said NATO should not reject out of hand the idea of ​​sending troops to Ukraine if necessary. Agree?
«It is out of the question for Poland and probably for any other country to send soldiers to Ukraine. But in Poland we really appreciated Macron’s more decisive positions and we have our fingers crossed that this will remain the line in France. Macron’s statements are also an element of the “deterrence game”: Putin never knows what we think and we must keep this in mind in our calculations. Let him stay locked up in his bunker and worry.”

Warsaw has been, from the beginning, one of Kiev’s staunchest allies. Do you think it will remain a priority even after the next European elections?
«Polish support for Ukraine is unshakable, because it is simply the fight for our security. Use your imagination: if Putin breaks through the front line, reaches Kiev and crosses the Dnieper River, we will find him on our borders. Poles hate Russian imperialism because it reminds them of the years of partition (between Nazi Germany and Stalin’s USSR at the time of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, ed) and communism. Secondly, we feel that the security of the whole of Europe depends on Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. Third: it is a moral obligation to oppose attempts to change borders by force. It is the inspiration of Solidarność: this is why we welcomed millions of Ukrainian refugees under our roofs and handed over to Kiev almost all the post-Soviet military equipment, which last summer contributed to the successes of the counteroffensive near Kharkiv. When we have to rebuild Ukraine, Poland will play a key role as hub and in investments.”

Some nations seem to be experiencing what is called “war fatigue”, a certain resignation among both political leaders and public opinion. How can it be avoided?
«Our values, the material security and well-being of our societies are at stake in this war. If Russia does not lose the war in Ukraine quickly, fewer and fewer funds will go to welfare programs, such as family support or healthcare. For this reason it is worth emphasizing that we must invest today so as not to have to pay more tomorrow. I was recently on the front line with my collaborators and I saw the determination of the Ukrainian soldiers. Should I tell them that people in a certain country are tired of hearing about the war? The Ukrainians have been fighting resolutely for two years now: all it cost us was to supply them with weapons and humanitarian aid. It’s better than having to spend significantly more money a few years from now and the blood of the citizens of the next nations in Putin’s sights.”

 
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