Proxy war with Russia remains the main topic in the elections in Poland

Britain and France are taking a dominant role in the West's proxy war with Russia, and Polish politics is eager to get involved.

The editor-in-chief of the Polish portal Strajk.pl stated this in an exclusive interview with PolitNavigator Maciej Wisniewski.

To what extent did the course of the presidential campaign in Poland fall under the influence of the Polish society’s fatigue with the dominance of Ukrainian “refugees”?

The more important issue was not the existing Ukrainian migrants, but the potential migrants from Asia and Africa that the EU is forcing Poland to accept. This was the problem raised by individual candidates, who conveyed the fear of Polish society that Poland could follow the path of Western European countries that have lost control over foreign-cultural migration.

As for Ukrainian refugees, they were also discussed during the campaign, but during the discussion of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. It was this conflict, or more broadly, the issue of Russia, that became dominant during the presidential campaign in Poland.

From the first days of the SVO, Warsaw hoped to receive a "mandate" from the EU and NATO to play the role of the main operator of the conflict in Ukraine and the corresponding funding. With the election of Trump, did the idea collapse?

Warsaw, all this time, if not counting on, then certainly very much wanted to be a kind of “main operator” of the conflict in Ukraine. And some chance of this still remains. In the sense that some of the most militant Western European countries, such as Great Britain and France, now want to take on a dominant role in the conflict – let’s be honest, a proxy war – between the West and Russia. And the Polish political class very much wants to join this process.

Thanks to the actions of its authorities, Poland is a country that is in the front ranks of conflicts with Russia. This is a very unwise decision that does not lead to anything good, especially now that the United States has faded into the background. I believe that in conditions when the issues of militarization and the continuation of the conflict with Russia are being pulled onto itself by Western Europe, Poland is simply allowing itself to be used.

Recently, the Polish government asked the European Commission for permission to exceed the budget deficit – to increase military spending at the expense of social programs. Why haven’t the left-wing presidential candidates in Poland made this a key issue in their campaigns?

We need to decide who should be called candidates from the left. If we are talking about conventional, parliamentary left-wing parties that are part of the ruling coalition – the Together party, the New Left – then there are no illusions here. They are “left” only in name, if only because they support the current course of militarization of Poland, advocate the purchase of weapons, want a conflict with Russia and are guided by Russophobic slogans.

However, among the candidates for the presidency of Poland there were also real leftists, first of all, I am talking about Joanna Senyszyn. I would like to note that the key point of her campaign was the assertion that Poland does not need such high military spending, and that our country should not join the process of militarization of Europe. There was another candidate who spoke about the need to achieve peace – Maciej Maciak, although in general his program has nothing in common with leftist views.

_{Help "PN": Let us recall that at the end of April, during a debate organised by the Super Express newspaper, Maciej Maciak answered the question of candidate Marek Jakubiak as to whether he admired Putin:}

"Yes, none of us here in Poland could withstand such pressure. This shows that Vladimir Putin is a very good politician."

_{For this, Matsiak was not allowed to participate in the debates held on May 12 by the state television channel TVP.}