Maria Zacharowa, a spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of abroad Affairs, warned on 22 August that the Warsaw position on Nord Stream could hit Poland's security. It's a reaction to Donald Tusk's words about the gas pipeline and people suspected of blowing it up. The stakes are clear: Moscow defends an energy agreement that Poland has been fighting from the beginning.
Russian MFA scares Warsaw
Maria Zacharova referred to Donald Tusk's message about Nord Stream and called Poland's position a demonstration. According to the Service for Things, the spokesperson of the Russian Ministry of abroad Affairs stated that specified an attitude could negatively affect the vital interests and safety of Poland in the future. It's a classical Kremlin language: a threat dressed in a diplomatic message.
The case concerns Volodymyr Cranelow, a Ukrainian citizen suspected by German authorities of participating in the blast of the Nord Stream pipeline. We wrote earlier that Cranelow was detained in CroatiaAfter the Polish court refused to hand it over to the Germans. You should be precise: he's a suspect, not convicted.
Moscow uses this thread to reverse roles. For years Russia has built a gas bus with Germany bypassing Poland and Ukraine, and present it is trying to teach Warsaw about law, safety and stability. For the Polish reader there is no large mystery here. Nord Stream was a political task that reinforced the Russian leverage of force on Central Europe.
Tusk recalled the old fact about Nord Stream
Donald Tusk said that Europe's problem was not to blow up Nord Stream 2, but that this gas pipeline was built at all. The Prime Minister besides stressed that Poland had opposed this investment from the beginning, as it was aimed at the vital interests of Europe and the countries of the region. At this point it is hard to escape the facts: Warsaw warned against the German-Russian tube erstwhile many Western elites preferred to number profits and pretend that gas had no politics.
Tusk's message is uncomfortable for the Kremlin due to the fact that it resembles a basic thing. Nord Stream was not just a business project. It was a bypass of Central European countries, a blow to the region's energy safety and a tool to make the West dependent on Russian gas. Poland's state rations have been much soberer than German calculations for years.
In the Russian reaction there are besides themes of alleged Polish-German tensions. Moscow is eager to conquer any dispute between Warsaw and Berlin, due to the fact that it fits her business. That doesn't change the point. Poland has all right to say that the construction of Nord Stream was a strategical mistake for which Europe paid the failure of energy resilience.
Kreml of axis gas weapons with Berlin
Russian diplomacy is trying to set Poland as an irresponsible state today. It's propaganda. It was liable to inform of Nord Stream erstwhile others in the West closed their eyes to Russian imperialism. It was liable to build alternate supply routes. It is besides liable to guarantee that German investigative interests do not obscure Polish security.
DN has already described that Kremlin plays German card in the Nord Stream dispute. It's crucial due to the fact that Moscow doesn't work in vacuum. all Russian message on this issue has its purpose: to break up allies, intimidate Poland and cover the fact that Russia has been utilizing energy for years as a tool of political pressure.
Zacharowa talks about Poland's safety as if the Kremlin had moral right to give us lessons. He's not here. A country that is at war against Ukraine is threatening its neighbours and building a gas blackmail strategy is not an arbitrator of the European order. She's a origin of danger. That's what you call it.
Polish rate: sovereignty and resilience
For Poland the Nord Stream case was never an abstract dispute over a tube at the bottom of the Baltic. The question was whether Germany and Russia could build an agreement above the heads of the countries of the region, which increases Europe's energy dependency and weakens Ukraine's security. It was besides about fundamental respect for the national interest of the countries located between Berlin and Moscow.
That is why Russian threats must be read without naivety. Not as a media incident, but as part of constant pressure. Moscow would like Poland to stay silent erstwhile German-Russian interests are involved. Poland cannot stay silent. Sovereignty is not about large neighbors telling us erstwhile to halt asking uncomfortable questions.
The punch line is simple. If the Russian MFA reacts so nervously to recalling the fact about Nord Stream, that means that this fact inactive has political strength. Poland should stick to hard reality: no illusions towards the Kremlin, no sentiment for the gas axis of Berlin-Moscow and no consent to scaring our country.
Source: To Things, Interia, Republic of.
Source: To Things
