This evening’s News of the Week program on Russian state television opened with a 30 minute documentary survey of Polish-Russian relations from the end of WWI and during the period of the Russian Civil War, when the government under Marshall Pilsudski wrested substantial territory from Russian control. It also dealt extensively with Poland’s well documented role as aggressor and occupier of Czechoslovak, Lithuanian, Ukrainian and Belarus lands from before the start of WWII and until Hitler overran Poland.
This reportage was all built around Vladimir Putin’s speech to the RF Security Council on Friday which was partly broadcast then. Excerpts from that speech were used to introduce or segments of the overall documentary.Let us recall that on Friday, Putin explained how and why we may expect the formal entry into the war of a Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian joint military force that will officially be presented as defending Ukrainian statehood by occupying the Western Ukraine. However, Putin described this as an occupying force which once installed in Lvov and Western Ukraine would never leave. This would in effect be a repeat of the sell-out of Ukrainian interests to Poles and cession of territory to Poland such as had been perpetrated by their leader Semyon Petlyura in April 1920 and has now been repeated in the secret agreements between presidents Zelensky of Ukraine and Duda of Poland.
However, that was not the only pending Polish aggression announced by Vladimir Putin on Friday. He said that Poland also had designs on Belarus land. The documentary this evening fleshed out that remark and reminded us of what Belarus territory Poland had grabbed by force in the 20th century when it had the opportunity. It also pointed a finger at those Belarus fighters abroad who will be used by Poland to spearhead their move against Minsk from Polish territory, and what armaments they are receiving from the United States and NATO member countries.
With respect to Polish designs on Ukraine, Putin did not tip his hand on what Russia’s response may be. But as regards Belarus, he stated directly on Friday that any act of aggression against Belarus will be considered an attack on Russia and Russia will respond with all the military force at its disposal. He warned Warsaw to consider the consequences of their actions.
Putin’s speech on Friday appeared to be directed at Warsaw. The program this evening was clearly directed at the broad Russian public, to prepare them for the onset of a possible Russian-Polish war in the immediate future.
This point was highlighted by the ongoing visit of Belarus president Lukashenko to Petersburg. There has been pomp and ceremony in this visit. Both presidents today visited Kronstadt, touring its principal church, which is the spiritual home of the Russian Navy. They also visited the about to be opened new museum of the Russian Navy, and its featured exhibit, which is Russia’s first nuclear submarine, the country’s answer to the American Nautilus at the time. And they held talks on the military and political threats their countries face. These talks unexpectedly will continue in the Konstantinovsky Palace outside Petersburg tomorrow. The reason for extensive consultations was clear from remarks that Lukashenko made to the press during his meeting with Putin: namely that Belarus military intelligence has been following very closely the massive build-up of Polish forces including tanks, helicopters and other heavy military equipment close to the Belarus border at several locations.
Tonight’s News of the Week program explained to the Russian public that the Poles’ new aggressive plans are proceeding only because of their confidence that Uncle Sam supports them. And they named the person embodying this link as former Foreign Minister of Poland Radoslaw Sikorsky (2014-15), who is today a Member of the European Parliament and delegate responsible for relations with the United States. A photo of Sikorski’s latest meetings with Pentagon officials and with Joe Biden and his advisers was put on the screen. For those who may wonder about Sikorsky’s political views, it pays to remember that he is the husband of neo-con, Russia-hating journalist Anne Applebaum, who is very well known to American audiences for her regular columns in The Washington Post.
From Russian talk shows of the past several days, it is easy to understand the Kremlin’s reading of the present proxy war in and around Ukraine: Washington sees that the Ukrainian counter-offensive is a complete failure that has cost tens of thousands of lives among the Ukrainian armed forces and has seen the destruction of a large part of the Western equipment delivered to Ukraine over the past months. Instead of suing for peace, Washington seeks to open a ‘second front,’ using Poland for this purpose.
One possible Russian response to any move against Belarus has also been discussed on air: to seize the Suwalki corridor that connects Kaliningrad to Belarus across Polish territory.. Taking control of that corridor would have the effect of isolating the Baltic States from Poland and thereby put their security at peril.
The inescapable conclusion from the latest news is that Washington’s incendiary policies and continuing escalation of the conflict cannot secure Russia’s defeat. On the contrary, they may well lead to the total collapse of the NATO alliance once its military value is disproven in a way that cannot be talked away or papered over by the most creative propagandists in DC.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023
Gilbert Doctorow 
Isn’t the importance of the Suwalki corridor somewhat exaggerated? The Baltic States have extensive coastlines, thus as long as their ports remain open they should be fine.
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“The Baltic States have extensive coastlines”
The entire Baltic Sea and parts of the North Sea are covered by Russian hypersonic, unstoppable, missiles that are based either in Kaliningrad or near to Saint Petersburg.
The idea that the Baltic is a “NATO lake” is delusional in the extreme. We have all seen by now how the West has no equivalent hypersonic missiles let alone a functional air defense system. The Patriot and Aegis are a joke.
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I wasn’t suggesting that the Baltic Sea is a NATO lake but it isn’t a Russian lake either. And Russia has only a limited number of these advanced weapons; it can’t use them as liberally as artillery shells. They are a game changer (for now) but not yet the end times.
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“Russia has only a limited number of these advanced weapons”
We have heard that refrain for 18 months. Russia has a prodigious existing weapons and ammunition manufacturing capacity.
Here is a description of how Russia controls the Black Sea. It applies also to the Baltic Sea which is much smaller. In the event of hostilities, all sea trade would halt. Russia is far less dependent on this sea trade than any of the other countries on the Baltic.
Retired US admiral Stavridis – degree in literature – demonstrates his profound ignorance of naval matters as pertaining to the Black Sea. He does not seem to even know the geography.
𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐯𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐬 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐖𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐓𝐨 𝐅𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭.
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Indeed, there is another side to the issue, which is probably more important: the Suwalki corridor ensures the viability of the Russian enclave in Kaliningrad, which is heavily armed with missiles and could be a serious factor in any kinetic war between Russia and NATO.
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How big is the Polish buildup? I cannot seem to find any exact information on the size and quality of their military and the weaponry they have at their disposal.
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Directly at the Belarus border in the area of Grodno and Brest there are 1,000 Polish soldiers and 200 pieces of heavy equipment
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That doesn’t sound like “massive.” Still, why even such a build-up? What is it that the Polish russophobic government intends to do? Threaten Belarus? What political gain would that be? Threatening Russia makes even less sense. As Orlov recently pointed out very clearly, no sane person or government wants to wage war against Russia. Russia has now become an indestructible nation–unless, of course, NATO/USA are suicidal enough to attack Russia with nuclear weapons. Then the history of homo sapiens, who is not sapiens, is over.
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The entire Polish army is around 120,000 – of which 30,000 is combat troops.
The best proxy of NATO was Ukraine. Ukraine had an army several times as large as Poland and much better equipped. Ukraine was essentially defeated by June 2022. The current iteration of the Ukrainian army is the 3rd iteration. It is being annihilated at present by trying the impossible – to penetrate Russia’s prepared defenses without air support and with limited artillery support. The fighting has been going on for 6 weeks and the Ukrainians not even reached anywhere the first line of defense.
NATO is sending to their death thousands of unfortunate Ukrainians. Even the Wall Street Journal said this two days ago.
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Gilbert, you really should go into fiction mate. You are mostly there already. Perhaps in the vein of Tom Clancy or Larry Bond? Obviously you’d need to work on your weapons knowledge. But its a start eh?
Cass
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Such sarcasm is perhaps justified from your perspective, but it is a fact that Poland is already waging war against Russia by massively supplying NATO weapons and mercenaries to Ukraine, most of whom are Polish. That is not fiction, mate.
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Hello Dr. Doctorow, I always appreciate your cogent analysis. If possible, I plan to meet my U.S. Representative and warn her about how the U.S. and Russia are headed toward WW III. She will receive a brief geography lesson. Keep up the great work you do. Shalom — Marc in the U.S.A.
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Thank you for your analysis – we live in mad times…. “Instead of suing for peace, Washington seeks to open a ‘second front,’ using Poland for this purpose.”
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I have long wondered at the hysterical intensity of polish hatred of Russia. Even allowing for the general anti-Russian derangement in the West it seems too intense to be motivated by fear of Russia aggression or by the nurturing of past grievances. But I think I get it now: it isn’t that Poland fears Russia, rather it is that it sees it as a rival and an obstacle to its neo-imperial ambitions to dominate Eastern Europe and maybe beyond.
As you surely know, the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth which Poland, in the manner of Turkey’s neo-ottoman ambitions, seems to want to resurrect in some form, encompassed much more than present-day Poland and Lithuania: significantly, it encompassed all of Belarus and most of Ukraine. Thus I think Belarus is right to be worried.
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Thank you for the extremely helpful article that helps me, and I suspect others, put together the various snippets and reports we have been hearing and reading.
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Interesting that in Putin’s speech he made a clear distinction between potential Polish ambitions in Ukraine and in Belarus. Dire warnings re the latter, but seemingly carte blanche re the former:
“As for the Polish leaders, they probably hope to form a coalition under the NATO umbrella in order to directly intervene in the conflict in Ukraine and to bite off as much as possible, to “regain,” as they see it, their historical territories, that is, modern-day Western Ukraine. It is also common knowledge that they dream about Belarusian land.
Regarding the policy of the Ukrainian regime, it is none of our business. If they want to relinquish or sell off something in order to pay their bosses, as traitors usually do, that’s their business. We will not interfere.”
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/71714
“We will not interfere”! To me that reads like a clear *invitation* to Poland to gobble up Galicia and whatever else they may want in the west of Ukraine (via a ‘protection’ force of course) so long as they don’t mess with the Union State. I guess it is also aimed at Ukraine’s leadership, as a warning that permanent territorial losses in the east may not be the only thing they need to worry about if Poland gets involved directly.
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In general, you are right about Putin’s seeming non-interference in Polish takeover of Western Ukraine. I considered revising my sentence to that effect, BUT what you are not citing is the follow on statement by Lukashenko in his joint meeting with Putin yesterday, namely that a Polish move in Ukraine would be “unacceptable.” So we have to sit and wait to learn what Russia’s real intentions are on the matter.
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Many thanks for pointing that out – mixed messages from the Union State!
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“. . . the total collapse of the NATO alliance once its military value is disproven in a way that cannot be talked away or papered over by the most creative propagandists in [Washington] DC.
In my opinion, the fully controlled, fully manipulated, fully owned Western mainstream media (now insisting on being called the “Legacy Media”), is capable of papering over anything.
The “total collapse of the NATO alliance,” is meaningless. NATO is the United States. The EU, the UK, Europe, France, Germany, and Poland are vassal states. They count for nothing. The United States is NATO.
If Poland invades Belarus or the Ukraine the conflict goes from being a Ukrainian/Russo “conflict” to a NATO/Russo “conflict” which will be a direct conflict between the United States and Russia. Article 5 won’t even be a speed bump to World War 3. And this is not even how crazy and how insane things have become.
Anybody who watched Antony Blinken’s latest public demonstration, described by Andrei Martyanov, as “a serious mental disorder in which people interpret reality abnormally” didn’t listen to Caroline Kennedy (formerly Caroline Kennedy-Schlossberg, formerly US Ambassador to Japan during Obama’s presidency, and now currently US Ambassador to Australia under “Sleepy Old” Joe Biden’s presidency) give her little speech at the June 5TH christening of the USS Canberra as “preserving the stability and prosperity of a rules-based order.”
Perhaps we are supposed to expect this kind of behavior from people like Blinken, but from the daughter of JFK?
First of all, haven’t we heard enough of this whole “rules-based order” crap enough already? Whose rules? Whose order? So now we are launching battleships (that look like Poodles), in the service of a hegemon? Kind of breaks your heart.
Secondly, if her father, JFK, had heard his own daughter speak in the service of these kinds of twisted democratic principles and this delusion called “democracy,” he would have dis-owned her.
I doubt, with the way things are, that if Washington, DC were to be nuked we would never know about it.
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If what you say about Polish buildup is true, then that is not a buildup but a threat display, and seems to be working well, though I am not sure if spooking Russians and Belorussians into their own bigger threat display was intended.
However incompetent Polish military leadership is, they would know, that that is not sufficient to attack and occupy anything, except perhaps some roadside chapel.
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Thank you. Most informative.
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