A Russian tank destroyed in Ukraine on Castle Square in Old Town, Warsaw, Poland, July 4, 2022 (Photo: Nick Siekierski)
My recent talk on the subject of this newsletter at Channing House in Palo Alto, California, April 24, 2024
Few countries in modern history have “suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” like Poland. More than one-hundred years after the country was dismembered by three surrounding empires (Russia among them), she regained independence in 1918. In large part thanks to the American Relief Administration, led by Herbert Hoover, this fledgling independence was shielded and nurtured through massive supplies of food and aid that helped Poland weather the storm of war in 1920 against the Bolshevik Red Army (also Russia, though Soviet in form). I had the opportunity to speak about this at my last Channing House talk several years ago. Shortly afterwards I defended my PhD thesis on the subject in Warsaw, just two days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine began.
Just two decades after regaining independence in 1918, Poland was torn apart again, this time as the result of the Hitler-Stalin Pact and the German and Soviet invasions that soon followed in September 1939. Despite valiant resistance by the Polish underground in the country, and the tremendous sacrifices of Polish soldiers fighting at the side of the Allies in the West, Poland would lose the eastern half of its territory, which is now largely part of modern-day Ukraine and Belarus, and all of its independence, becoming a satellite of the Soviet Union until 1989. Though it wasn’t until 1991 when Red Army troops began to leave Poland and 1993 (already after the Soviet Union had collapsed) that the final Russian soldiers left the country.
The history of the Ukrainian nation is no less tumultuous. But, besides two short-lived republics immediately following World War I, the Ukrainians would not take control of their own state until 1991. Years of Soviet domination had a lasting effect that persists to this day, from the heavy Russification of the culture (though the past few years have seen it increasingly purged from public life) to essentially Russian colonization of a large part of the country, especially in the eastern Donbas region and Crimea, areas occupied by Russia since the conflict began in 2014.
My last exhibition at the Hoover Library and Archives focused on the democratic revolutions across Eastern Europe as communism fell. The final display case was dedicated to the events that unfolded in Ukraine in late 2013 with protests after then-president Viktor Yanukovich refused to sign an association agreement with the EU and instead chose to deepen ties with Russia.
This would lead to violent clashes and the ultimate ouster of Yanukovich in what was known as the Revolution of Dignity or the Maidan Revolution which marked the beginning of the conflict we are witnessing today. The homemade signs and leaflets on display then were collected by the Robert Conquest Curator for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia at the Library & Archives, Dr. Anatol Shmelev, a speaker at Channing House not long ago.
The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation on February 24, 2022, marked a dramatic escalation in that conflict which began a decade ago. Poland played and continues to play an indispensable role as an ally of Ukraine in its valiant defense against the Russian forces, both directly in terms of military aid along with facilitating its transfer through Polish territory. It also supports more than 1 million Ukrainian citizens, primarily women and children, through social welfare programs and private charity.
Train platform at the Warsaw Central Station, most of the passengers are Ukrainian refugees headed further west, March 5, 2022 (Photo: Nick Siekierski)
The herculean efforts by the Poles to aid the Ukrainians in the critical first weeks and months of the war cannot be underestimated. Heavy armaments included over 300 tanks, mostly T72s but also modern Leopards, 350 armored personnel carriers, 74 self-propelled Krab artillery (40 km range, 155mm shell), 14 Mig 29 fighter jets, 12 Mi-24 attack helicopters and the Piorun (Lightning) anti-aircraft system, among many other items. This materiel was vital in the early battles, buying time for the arrival of more advanced Western equipment, like the HIMARS rocket artillery, for which deliveries only began in June 2022. Of the smaller armaments Poland has also given more than 10,000 FN MSBS Grot rifles, Poland’s most advanced main battle rifle and has also trained over 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers.
Most of the weapons, equipment and aid continue to be transferred by land through unmarked border crossings from Poland to Ukraine, having earlier landed at the Rzeszów Airport in southeastern Poland, the hub for the majority of aid to Ukraine since 2022. In total, about 40 military aid packages have been signed by Poland for Ukraine, totaling approximately $3.7 billion in military materiel. Poland is also continuously serving as an equipment repair hub for Ukraine, with damaged and worn-out tanks and other vehicles and machines being shipped back across the border to be fixed and refurbished.
While the transfers of military supplies severely depleted Poland’s stocks, it has also served as a strong motivator (for many other NATO countries as well) to overhaul and modernize its military. Poland will spend over $41 billion on defense in 2024, near 4% of the country’s GDP. While Poland is left with about 500 tanks after sending so many to Ukraine, in 2023 Poland signed an agreement to purchase 115 Abrams M1A1 tanks from the US, 43 of which have been delivered and more will arrive this year. Next year, 125 of the most modern M1A2 Abrams tanks will arrive. Add to this close to 200 South Korean K2 tanks between now and 2025. A framework agreement to purchase another 820 K2 tanks has been signed, most of which will be built in Poland. The country intends to have the most formidable armored corps in Europe. Hundreds of HIMARS rocket artillery are also planned for purchase though it’s unclear how many will ultimately arrive.
Polish self-propelled AHS Krab artillery during a military parade in Warsaw, May 3, 2019 (Photo: Office of the Sejm of Poland/Rafał Zambrzycki)
The massive Polish and Western military deliveries to Ukraine in her time of desperate need, a reply to President Zelensky’s early appeal “I need ammunition, not a ride”, staunched the bleeding on the front lines, while a massive human wave of Ukrainian refugees and foreign nationals seeking to escape the war zone, flooded into EU countries, most of all to Poland.
More than 3 million Ukrainians, close to ten percent of the pre-war population of the country, have passed through Poland since 2022, with approximately one million staying for the long term and receiving Polish social security numbers and associated benefits. This is a point of contention for many Poles who question whether the relatively meager benefits that they’ve earned over an adult lifetime of work should also be granted to Ukrainian citizens, who aren’t all of course desperate and penniless.
This is just a personal anecdote, but I’ve seen as many Teslas with Ukrainian license plates in Warsaw as I have with Polish ones. While the most affluent Ukrainians are just a fraction of the whole, they’ve disproportionately fled their country, many avoiding mandatory military service this way. Like Russia, Ukraine also has its class of oligarchs and post-Soviet nomenklatura who made their fortunes through nepotism and corruption, to the great detriment of the Ukrainian people. Ukraine will have to deal with this situation if it hopes to become an EU member.
More than two years into the full-scale war, the dynamic between Poland and Ukraine has decidedly changed. The failure of the much-vaunted Ukrainian counter-offensive which lasted from last summer until the fall, has dampened support for the Ukrainian cause, where the largely unexpected and successful counter-offensive a year earlier, in late 2022, which led to the retaking of Kharkiv and the surrounding region, bolstered morale both in Ukraine and beyond.
A series of other issues have led to friction between the two countries, most visibly the so-called grain crisis which began in April of last year. Deprived of their traditional transport route for grain and other agricultural products through the Black Sea due to the Russian naval blockade, the Ukrainians have been transporting most of their exports by rail and truck through Poland. Much of these items, grain especially, has made it onto the Polish market, severely undercutting Polish farmers. Parallel to this, Ukrainian trucking companies are an increasingly larger force in the EU market, also severely undercutting their competition.
The backlash has seen Polish truckers and farmers blockading border crossings between the two countries, limiting the number of transports that can pass and going so far as to spill the grain out of several rail cars onto the tracks in one incident, that the farmers claimed would have been unsealed in Lithuania, receive the appropriate papers and return to be dumped back on the Polish market.
Though directly related to the Ukraine war and its secondary effects, the trucker and farmer protests are also in line with broader, EU-wide protests against increasingly severe restrictions being put on the agricultural sector by the European Commission, essentially putting many farmers out of business by exponentially increasing costs. These regulations are part of the European Green Deal, approved by the Commission in 2020 to make the EU climate-neutral by 2050. This is increasingly seen as an unrealistic and even destructive goal, especially given the grave challenges Europe faces, most notably Russia’s revived imperial ambitions.
The central player in the European Union is Germany and much of the challenges facing Europe now are a result of German policies. For decades prior to the warfare we are witnessing now, Germany was Russia’s best customer for oil and gas imports. Hundreds of billions of euros were transferred to Putin’s regime, which both served to bolster the military which is fighting in Ukraine now and helped to entrench the oligarchic system in Russia.
The final certification for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, meant to deliver gas directly from Russia to Germany, was nearing completion when the invasion began. This would have offered Russia a massive tool for leveraging its political influence over Europe through energy. German policy over the past few decades especially has been to build relations with Russia through energy dealings as a limit on Russian territorial ambitions. After all, if you’re making billions of dollars on energy every month, why would you invade a neighbor of your customers? Unfortunately, this policy failed.
At the start of the invasion, Germany imported roughly 50% of all of its gas and oil from Russia. Although that has been severely curtailed since then, the demand for energy to power the world’s 4th largest economy remains. Given the historic tendency of Germany to gravitate towards Russia, a phenomenon that has yielded catastrophic effects for Europe in the 20th century, Poland’s position (as well as Ukraine’s) between the two major powers continues to be precarious.
Regrettably, early hopes for closer political ties between Poland and Ukraine, even radical suggestions of a federation between the two, have evaporated. Ukraine, and most visibly its President, Volodymyr Zelensky, aspire to membership in the EU as an opportunity for tremendous economic advancement, not to mention potential investment and reconstruction capital. As the deciding force in the bloc due to its economic position, Germany has therefore become the preferred partner for engagement. The tremendous risk that this brings for Ukraine however is the stark reality that Moscow is a much more important player (not to mention a past and hoped to be future, economic and political partner) for Berlin.
While on paper Germany’s support to Ukraine is second only to the United States, the glaring reality of Germany’s wait-and-see approach in the critical early phase of the war was highly indicative of Berlin’s anticipation of a rapid Ukrainian defeat. Presumably, they expected a quick coming to terms and resumption of relations with Russia (before any serious sanctions or the wholesale cutting off of energy imports could be contemplated). While Poland and others were sending tanks and artillery, Germany was dithering for weeks. Immediately before the invasion they refused to provide even defensive weapons, instead drawing mockery for promising 5,000 helmets for Ukraine. The US and the UK were sending Javelin anti-tank launchers and anti-aircraft weapons at the same time.
While at first glance, the periodically updated list of German supplies currently being delivered to Ukraine now is impressive, upon closer inspection, one sees a plethora of asterisks referring to a footnote stating that these are: “* Deliveries from industry stocks financed by German funds for security capacity building. Some of the deliveries require upgrades or productions is ongoing; also training measures take place.” Meaning that many of these “deliveries” are still paper promises.
Out of 215 equipment items listed, there are 150 asterisks. Add to this the recent and critical decision by the German government not to provide Ukraine with Taurus ballistic missiles with a 500 km range, for fear of escalating the conflict. This was a source of embarrassment recently when a presentation for Chancellor Scholz by senior German Air Force officers about the Taurus and its potential for destroying the Kerch Strait Bridge, connecting the Russian mainland with the Crimean peninsula, was tapped by the Russians and released to the public.
Germany is also perpetually behind on its own military spending, consistently failing to achieve the 2% of GDP standard accepted by NATO. According to some estimates, Germany is as much as 300-350 billion euros ($320-375 billion) behind in defense spending.
Thankfully Ukraine does not have to rely on Germany as the primary provider of military aid. The $60 billion in funding recently passed by the US House of Representatives, approved by the Senate and signed by President Biden, is of singular importance to Ukraine’s future. There is no getting around the fact that there is a profound leadership vacuum in Europe and that the United States is and will be for the foreseeable future the linchpin of the continent’s security. Of course this is not an indefinitely sustainable situation.
An American M-1 Abrams tank displayed during Polish Armed Forces Day on Józef Piłsudski Square, Warsaw, Poland, August 15, 2022 (Photo: Nick Siekierski)
In 2017, Dr. Thomas Henriksen, Emeritus Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, wrote the book Cycles in US Foreign Policy Since the Cold War. I assisted with its editing. It highlights the periodic engagement and withdrawal of US involvement in world affairs. I would argue that although America has not been engaged in full-scale wars since Afghanistan and Iraq, the heights of which were nearly 20 years ago, a consistent level of engagement abroad has been ratcheting up higher in the 21st century. The ongoing threat from Russia and the gathering confrontation with China does not allow for a period of respite. Couple this with the American people’s understandable fatigue and frustration from over 20 years of constant flashpoints across the globe, and apparently never-ending expenditures of resources, especially on allies who have yet to fully shoulder the burden of their own defense.
I was heartened to hear Rose Gottemoeller’s (Deputy Secretary General of NATO from October 2016 to October 2019) assessment at the last Channing House talk about the role played by former president Donald Trump in putting pressure on NATO allies, especially Germany, to increase their defense spending. I believe this was necessary to light a fire under the alliance and I think it was far-sighted, especially as it came five years before Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Political differences aside though, I think both the policies of President Biden and former President Trump are largely in line with America’s Cold War policies towards NATO and Russia and I wouldn’t expect any dramatic changes in that regard irrespective of who wins the election in November.
Following a meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda recently, Trump affirmed that he was “behind Poland all the way” and that “the survival of Ukraine is important to the United States”, almost certainly tipping the scales in favor of the recently passed foreign aid bill, indicating that election-time rhetoric is not the same as concrete policy realities.
The $60 billion in funding that will soon begin to flow into Ukraine in the form of military hardware and economic assistance (following $133 billion given thus far by the US) should be seen as buying time not only for Ukraine, but for the entire NATO alliance. $120 billion in orders were placed with US defense contractors by EU countries last year. Of course the fulfillment of these orders is a years-long process.
For Poland in particular, this should be a time from maximally strengthening not only its military capabilities, but its logistical capacity and economic growth. Unfortunately, the recently elected government in Warsaw is not inclined to pursue such a direction when it conflicts with German interests. I highlight some of these troubling signals in my most recent newsletter which I invite you to read on my website, entitled “Storm Clouds Over Poland.”
It’s not out of the question of course that rapidly developing threats will force current and future leaders in Poland to take dramatic action to protect the nation’s security. One such recent indication was the statement by President Duda that “If our allies decide to deploy nuclear weapons as part of nuclear sharing on our territory as well, in order to strengthen the security of NATO’s eastern flank, we are ready for it.” This is a response to Russia’s increased militarization of the Kaliningrad Oblast and relocation of nuclear weapons to Belarus.
The ongoing modernization of NATO’s air forces also provides substantial reassurance, namely the continued introduction of the F-35, the most advanced fighter plane in the world. Poland is set to receive between 4-6 of them this year with that many being delivered each year until 2030. NATO as a whole already fields 120 F-35s, with as many as 600 total being in service within a decade, an amazing threat deterrent against Russia. Nearly 1,000 F-35s have been built thus far, with the majority in America’s arsenal. It’s closest comparable fighter adversary, the SU-57 is less capable and the Russians may only have a few dozen total in service.
Ukraine is also slated to receive F-16 fighter planes which will substantially enhance their defensive capacity against Russia, though probably won’t seriously change the situation on the ground. The planes themselves are of course just one part of the equation, the training itself is 9 months long and a squadron of 12 planes requires roughly 250 ground personnel, technicians, logisticians and others, not to mention serious anti-air defenses, to maintain. The logistical supply chain will certainly extend back into Poland and other NATO countries.
Zbigniew Brzeziński, Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, and a highly respected geostrategist who passed away in 2017, argued in the early 1990s that Poland’s alliance with Ukraine was even more important than NATO in checking Russian imperialism. To a large extent his prediction has come true, though it’s both NATO and Ukraine (with the latter essentially being an unofficial candidate member) upon which Poland’s security rests.
Map of Europe highlighting the geographic connection between Poland and Ukraine,
At the same time it is in Ukraine’s interest to maintain good relations with Poland as the lifeline through which lifesaving aid and a transit corridor for its citizens is maintained. (I can add that my father, Dr. Maciej Siekierski, then curator of the European collection at Hoover, tried to acquire his papers before Dr. Brezinski passed away but he had already committed them elsewhere). Brzeziński also noted that: “Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.”
Since January 2024, the Kremlin has seized 360 square kilometers (140 square miles) of Ukrainian territory, roughly the size of Detroit. Of a total of 603 550 sq km (233,031 sq mi) that makes up the territory of Ukraine, Russia today controls 38,610 sq mi, or 17% of the country. Those 140 square miles have been bought at a tremendous price in the blood of soldiers and military equipment destroyed.
As someone who has closely studied World War II and its aftermath, and simultaneously grew up over the past 40 years, arguably the most peaceful and prosperous in the history of the Western world, it’s hard not to recognize that times are changing. By the middle of this century, we may look back upon the several decades leading up to 2020 as a golden age. I hope that’s not the case, but history tells us that it’s better to be prepared than to be caught flat footed.
As Thomas Jefferson wrote over 200 years ago, “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” As Ukraine demonstrates the sacrifices necessary to resist imperial tyranny in the 21st century, Poland and NATO’s eastern flank especially, can’t afford to let their guard down. It’s time for Europe as a whole to shoulder an increasing amount of the burden for its own defense, grateful as always that the United States has carried the lion’s share for so long.
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