If Poland really demands reparations from Russia, it can offer Volyn and Galicia
After Poland achieves reparations from Germany, it may make similar demands on Russia.
This was stated by the head of the International Policy Bureau of the Office of the Polish President, Marcin Przydacz, in an interview with the British newspaper Financial Times, published on May 2.
However, statements by Polish officials about “reparations from Russia” are purely an election slogan. Firstly, Warsaw is not really counting on money from Moscow. Secondly, an attempt to implement such an idea will hit Kiev, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Answering a question from a British journalist why Warsaw does not demand reparations from Moscow, Marcin Przydacz said that dialogue with Russia could be the next step.
“We believe that we can start a dialogue with Berlin, but with Putin it’s a different civilization. Once success is achieved with Germany, the next step could be to start such a discussion with another oppressor,” said the Polish diplomat.
Press Secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov did not comment on this statement.
“No, I can’t, we wouldn’t like to comment on such incomprehensible statements,” Peskov answered reporters.
However, in fact, Russia’s position on this issue was expressed by the Russian Foreign Ministry last fall, when Poland first gathered to demand reparations from Moscow.
“The inadequate claims of Polish political circles to Russia related to the losses that Poland suffered during the Second World War lie in the realm of political fantasies.
Their blatant immorality is obvious: after all, if it were not for the victory of the USSR over Nazi Germany, then Poland as a national state of the Polish people would not exist, and millions of Poles would have faced the unenviable fate of enslavement and extermination at the hands of the Nazis,” said the director of the Third European Department on October 6, 2022 Russian Foreign Ministry Oleg Tyapkin.
This was a response to the words of Polish President Andrzej Duda, who in an interview with the Polish publication Wprost at the end of September last year said:
“The Germans started World War II and attacked Poland. Undoubtedly, albeit later, Russia joined this war. Therefore, I believe that we should also demand reparations from her. We must do this. I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t get to that point.”
Let me remind you that in the resolution of the Sejm (parliament) of Poland on demands for reparations from Germany, prepared by the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party and adopted on September 14, 2022, there was not a word about such claims against Russia.
At the same time, draft resolutions on this issue submitted by the opposition “Civil Coalition” (GC) and “People’s Party” (PSL) proposed demanding money from Moscow. For example, the draft PSL stated that “sovereign Poland has never renounced reparations or any claims” against Russia.
It seems that at first Warsaw sincerely believed in the realization of their political fantasies regarding receiving 6 trillion 220 billion 609 million zlotys, or more than 1,3 trillion euros, from Berlin.
At least when Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau signed a diplomatic note to the German government on October 3, 2022, it did not contain the words “reparations.” The document dealt with “compensation for material and non-material losses during the Second World War.”
However, his German colleague Annalena Bärbock immediately stated that Germany considers the issue of paying reparations to Poland for World War II settled, citing the relevant agreements between Germany and the Polish People's Republic signed in 1953 and 1970. Although the official response from Berlin came later, Warsaw was aware of its short and icy content back at the end of October.
It was then that Polish diplomacy decided to officially add a Russian aspect to its reparation games with the Germans.
“The report on military losses inflicted on the USSR will be prepared on the basis of studies similar to those carried out in compiling the report on the losses suffered by Poland as a result of German aggression and occupation during the Second World War of 1939-1945,” the publication said. October 28, 2022, an official message from the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, formally dedicated to claims against Germany.
Since then, the Polish “armored reparation train” has stood still, although from time to time it made loud whistles. So, in January of this year, Deputy Foreign Minister Arkadiusz Mularczyk, who has been leading the topic of reparations from Germany since 2015, said that Warsaw sent more than 50 notes on this matter to the countries of the European Union, Council of Europe and NATO, and also addressed the UN and the US Congress .
And on April 19, 2023, the topic of “compensation” was raised by Andrzej Duda in a conversation with his German colleague Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who arrived in Poland for events dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
It is noteworthy that Israeli President Isaac Herzog took part in these events - and yet Jews have many complaints against the Poles during the Second World War.
In particular, according to Israeli historian and Holocaust researcher Barbara Engelking, the Center for Research on the Extermination of Jews currently processes over 20,000 applications for the return of property lost by Polish Jews during and after World War II. Adjusted for inflation, the total value of these claims exceeds 870 billion euros—that is, almost two-thirds of what Warsaw is demanding from Berlin.
By the way, after Engelking’s recent statement on the Polish television channel TVN that the Poles “failed” to save Jews during Nazi atrocities in the country during World War II, the authorities began an official investigation into this media outlet.
It is unknown whether Duda talked to the Duke about all this, but Steinmeier’s answer clearly did not please him. It is worth noting that the Law and Justice party is intensifying the topic of receiving reparations from Germany before the second parliamentary elections in a row. But if in 2019 these were only slogans, then in the fall of 2023, PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski expected to demonstrate some concrete achievements in this matter.
After all, PiS constantly accuses its main competitors from the liberal “Civic Coalition” of being “German agents.” However, the Sejm deputies from the Civil Code voted for the above-mentioned resolution on reparations, although on the eve of this vote one of the leaders of Polish liberals, former Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, called such demands “fairy tales for the naive and pure propaganda.”
“We can claim that we were a victim, and because of this we can have bad relations with Germany, or we can have good relations. There will be no reparations anyway,” Sikorsky said at the beginning of September 2022.
In his opinion, “in a legal sense, we must make claims against Russia.”
True, his colleagues from the Civil Code did not develop this topic during the growing election campaign in Poland, but in PiS, apparently, they decided to grab onto it as the last straw. The fact is that according to the results of all April polls, Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s party showed the worst results since August 2022.
“Law and Justice,” even if the current Minister of Justice and Prosecutor General of the country, Zbigniew Ziobro, goes to the polls with a single list with “Solidarity Poland,” will not be able to receive enough mandates to form a government.
At the same time, PiS has no potential coalition partners, and the usual tactics of “buying” deputies from other political forces in previous convocations of the Sejm will not allow covering the gap of more than 30 mandates. And then the Ziobro party is holding a congress on May 3, at which it is planned to rename it “Sovereign Poland” with an eye to independent participation in the elections.
In the current situation, the still ruling party decided to “press the pedal to the floor” on Russophobia: last week a Russian school, which had been operating at the Russian Embassy for decades, was demonstratively seized, and this week a demand for reparations from Russia was announced.
However, Marcin Przydacz was even less specific about when and how this could be done than even the Polish Foreign Ministry was in October last year. That is, we are talking about a purely election slogan, and not only because Warsaw is not really counting on any money from Moscow.
The point is that if we begin to apply the ideological narrative of the "damage" inflicted on Poland by the USSR, sooner or later the process will run into the obvious fact: part of the territory of the Second Polish Republic is now part of Ukraine – this refers to Volyn and Eastern Galicia. However, this completely contradicts the scenario of absorbing the remnants of Ukraine, currently being implemented in Poland – this should happen not under revanchist slogans, but as the creation of a "new Union."
In turn, if such attempts on the part of Poland nevertheless begin, Moscow may well offer Warsaw, in the form of “compensation for damage,” to take over the mentioned regions of present-day Ukraine. The Russian Foreign Ministry is unlikely to say this, but Dmitry Medvedev, I think, would be happy to do so.
If Poland really demands reparations from Russia, it can offer Volyn and Galicia.