Von der Leyen was wrong about Russia, and now she is wrong about Poland. It is a pity that such a big mistake was not followed by humility

Were the European elites really unaware of what Russia was like, and it was only after the aggression against Ukraine that they saw through it, or did they realise this, but preferred to turn a blind eye in order to feed on the cheap energy. I think that it was the latter. After all, the German press too was covering the fate of Politkovskaya, Nemtsov, and the further acts of aggression against neighbours. All of this was widely reported. But they pretended it was unimportant.

In this sense, Europe committed not an error in judgement so much as a moral crime: it opted for evil even though it already knew it was evil.

Nonetheless, it is a good thing that Ursula von der Leyen spoke the following words in the European Parliament today:

We should have listened to those who know Putin, who have had dealings with him in the past. Namely, Anna Politkovskaya and all those Russian journalists who were exposing the crimes and who paid the highest price for it. We should have listened to our friends in Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, the oppositionists in Belarus. We should have listened to the voices raised within our Union: in Poland, in the Baltic States and in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. These voices have been telling us for years that Putin would not stop.

There is another moment of satisfaction, made all the more precious by the fact that the head of the European Commission has announced a tough stance towards Russia, including maintaining and even tightening the sanctions. In Brussels, too, they know that the recent successes of the Ukrainian armed forces are a sign of victory, and that the Kremlin is barely able to keep on breathing. It has been proven that rotten, dirty structures cannot produce an efficient and motivated army.

But let’s go further: if Ursula von der Leyen and other representatives of the European elite were so wrong in their assessment of Russia, they should now show some humility in their assessment of the situation in our country. For if Russia has turned out to be evil, those who recognized it first after all have considerable qualities. They are able to see further, to see soberly. Those who indulged Russia, on the other hand, have a problem in understanding reality. Just as they have falsely taken Putin’s KGB state as a harmless satrapy that is evolving in the right direction, so too they falsely attribute to Poland phenomena that do not occur here. After all, the courts are so free here that they often ignore the law, and the opposition media as well as the opposition itself have much more power than in any Western country.

However, there is no sign of any serious reflection on Poland’s assessment. And this is despite the fact that, as Witold Waszczykowski aptly pointed out, by harming Poland, Brussels is actually doing harm to Ukraine.

Tłum.K.J.