Once regarded as an outcast, the nation now feels vindicated by its early warnings against Putin, and is flexing its military muscle says Paulina Olszanka in Wroclaw.
When Germany stalled on agreeing to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine late last month, Poland seized the initiative. The Poles would provide their own German-built Leopards instead, insisted the prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, whether Germany gave the required permission or not. “Even without Berlin’s help, we will send those tanks,” he said. “Even if that means building a smaller coalition.”
Days later, after Joe Biden said the US would be providing its own tanks to Kyiv, Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, announced that his country would send its Leopards after all.
Morawiecki’s power move was the latest indication that, in the wake of President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine a year ago this month, Warsaw has become a pivotal player at the heart of Europe. Its authority is both martial and moral: as well as having what will soon be the largest land army on the continent, it has also welcomed more than 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees, far more than any other country (not counting Russia, which claims to have taken in more).
Poland’s politicians have been trying to lay claim to such status for decades, which explains the country’s readiness to assume such a central role from the early days of the conflict.
“Poland sees itself as a big player, by nature of its geographic and population size, and strategic importance, but there’s always been this perception that it is kind of punching below its weight,” says Aleks Szczerbiak, professor of politics at the University of Sussex.
“The war is a moment that reveals a bigger geopolitical reality about the region and vindicates it, from Poland’s perspective.”
Competing narratives around Poland’s role in Europe have defined the country’s political landscape since the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989. For a long time after that, the prevailing view was that Poland should be integrated into the global market, the European Union and Nato. Historical wrongs would be righted but at the cost of its being subsumed into the bigger structures, as their weakest member.
But when the hardline conservative Law and Justice party came to power in 2015, it argued that too much “sovereignty” had been ceded to Brussels and that the “common wealth” had been sold out to western and international interests at the expense of “ordinary Poles”.
Since then, Law and Justice has attempted to set the nation on a different course diplomatically, leaning into confrontation with the EU, which largely regards it as an illiberal and destabilising force.
At home, Poland’s government has effectively banned abortion, politicised state media and the education system, and severely reduced the independence of the judiciary.
The European Commission’s concerns over the erosion of the rule of law in Poland are such that Brussels is refusing to hand over €35.4 billion euros in much-needed Covid relief funds.
Law and Justice, and many of its voters, see the tussle as being more about Poland exercising its own self-determination (leaving the EU is out of the question, with more than eight in ten Poles agreeing that the bloc promotes peace, democratic values and prosperity, according to a poll in October by the Pew Research Center).
Partly because it was regarded as an outcast, Poland’s repeated warnings about the economic overreliance on Russia by the EU, and Germany in particular, went largely unheeded for years. Not any more: the war has brought Warsaw in from the cold.
“From Poland’s point of view, this vindicates what it’s been saying for a long, long time about the nature of the Russian regime, and therefore a whole set of consequences flow on from that, including having to reorientate relations with Poland as a key and vindicated actor,” says Szczerbiak.
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Poland is becoming a more powerful player in Europe and has acted autonomously to send tanks to Ukraine - DAREK DELMANOWICZ/EPA
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