Europe’s support for Ukraine suffered an unexpected drop this week as Poland – until now Kiev’s staunchest ally on the continent – appeared to say it would stop sending arms to its neighbour. The move came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky criticized Warsaw for continuing to ban Ukrainian grain imports, and is the latest example of the Polish government’s more confrontational attitude towards Kiev, ahead of close parliamentary elections in the country.
The political theater has raised a number of important questions, the most important of which is, will this be the moment when Europe’s steadfast resolve in the face of a full-scale invasion by Russia will finally crack?
The European Union placed a temporary ban on grain imports from Ukraine in May to avoid a glut of cheap grain that would risk undermining farmers in Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. The EU suspended the ban last week, angering those countries, which have vowed to keep the restrictions in place, and in turn prompting protests from Poland.
Poland is weeks away from national elections on October 15, in which the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party is expected to suffer losses. In European politics he will tell you that agriculture is incredibly important. Farmers are motivated political actors and citizens tend to care about food security, sometimes disproportionately and irrationally. And PiS will need the rural votes to stay in power.
So it makes sense that the Polish government would want to make a nationalistic gesture that would grab the headlines. However, this relatively marginal dispute spiraled out of control on Tuesday, when Zelensky told the UN general assembly: “It is disturbing to see how some in Europe, some of our friends in Europe, are playing solidarity in a political theater – making a thriller out of wheat”.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki responded on social media the next day, saying: “We are no longer transporting weapons to Ukraine because we are now arming Poland.” Poland has since retracted those comments, promising to continue sending weapons it has already committed to providing. Polish President Andrzej Duda said his prime minister’s words were “interpreted in the worst possible way”.
The dispute raised important questions about European unity
No European official seriously believes that there is going to be a dramatic change in policy regarding support for Ukraine – especially from Poland. This is all pre-election debate. Farmers are an electoral group of PiS. Poland will continue to supply weapons to Ukraine as long as needed. The Poles have a vital interest in Ukraine winning this war, as otherwise they will be directly exposed to their arch-enemy (Russia), but they must win now because of the election.
While this may all be noise aimed at a domestic audience, it’s hard to overstate the level of anger in Poland. Ukraine has already offered Poland a grain solution. That’s why they are so pissed off with Poland. Like 24 member states who have been bullied for 18 months by Poland for not doing enough to support Ukraine.
The most serious takeaway from all of this is what it might mean for Ukraine in the long run. The West is currently making a great effort to integrate Ukraine into its institutions. The country is currently seeking to join both the EU and NATO, for which it has unanimous support. This support, however, already comes with caveats and conditions. Most EU member states accept that to accommodate Ukraine, there would have to be substantial reform of the way the EU works. The current EU structures would also give its newest member enormous influence in the institutions, namely the parliament and the council of the member states.
As for NATO, there are members of the alliance who do not like the idea that a country literally at war would have access to the Article 5 mechanism – the “all for one and one for all” trigger that prompts allies to support the each other. For a military alliance, many of the NATO countries don’t particularly like spending money on their own defense, let alone each other’s.
Poland’s outburst of arms allows countries that feel they have been strong-armed – and not just by Poland – to support Ukraine, to now legitimately strike back at the wisdom of the West throwing so much support into a country who is not even a member of the alliance.
The latest reason officials across Europe are outraged by this week’s events is that they give Russian President Vladimir Putin a propaganda advantage.
Russia’s disinformation war is often described by diplomats as a zero-sum game: what’s bad for the West is good for Russia. Public disputes between the West make it easy to claim that the West is divided, and a divided West is certainly a good thing for the Kremlin.
