Mykhailo Gonchar, President of the Centre for Global Studies "Strategy XXI", a member of the Polish-Ukrainian Forum, noted the following in his speech.
The result of the year since the launch of the Polish-Ukrainian Partnership Forum under the auspices of the foreign ministers of the two countries is disappointing.Despite some economic dynamics, the politicalsituation is not moving in the direction in which it was formally determined - the Polish-Ukrainian understanding.
There were many hopes for a Polish-Ukrainian strategic partnership, but now it's definitely not strategic one, at best,just a partnership.Poland turns into a partner, which I shouldn't place full confidence on.
Poland is the largest importer of Russian oil today, not even Poland, as its companies own assets, includingin other EU countries - Lithuania and the Czech Republic. Poland has a different position in terms of gas, but gas is not soimportantfor the Polish energy balance. Oil is essential. Whose energy you consume, from those you depend and their resources preset a certain attitude and the subsequent algorithm of the use of thecorresponding effect. Let's lookat Hungary. The situation is very similar. Hungaryalsocontrols oil refining in two other EU countries - Slovakia and Croatia. And we see what kind of policy is in the Hungarian government. In Romania, the situation is quite different, because it imports little Russian energy resources and largely supplies itself withits own gas and mostly its own oil, while the importing one - from Kazakhstan. Compare these three cases. Here is an obvious conclusion, to a certain extent.
Until recently, it was almost impossible to find apparent political pro-Russian lobby in Poland, it just did not exist, but now the situation is slowly changing. In the 90s it was virtually impossible. The Poles themselves said that there was no political force in Poland that was oriented on Russia. But they warned that in Poland there were quite a few economic actors who were doing their things.
And, of course, when we look at the latest Polish version of "Intermarium", which has traditionally been seen as Poland and Ukraine, there is practically no place in the latest version for Ukraine. We are there as the "Trimarium+", which is the exclusively EU format. Ukraine can be involved in certain individual communication projects, that is, we are simply left aside that is a peculiarity of the current Polish leadership policy.
Problems will arise, first of all, in the political sphere, but although we continue to regard Poland as a typically democratic country, all the decisions are taken by a person who does not occupy any state posts.And this is one more stroke to such a "specific" democracy in Poland.
It is necessary to develop the Polish-Ukrainian relations where we see potential in the economic sphere and there is a bilateral will to such cooperation, but one needs to pay attention to the fact that the political context, unfortunately,prevails in Polish approaches. And not only towards Ukraine, by the way.
Today, the Polish government is dominated by such an approach - not to create additional strategic dependencies, especially in sensitive areas, with the East. On the other hand, they are interested in developing certain projects where they can create sucha strategic dependence. This applies, in particular, to the construction of a new Polish-Ukrainian gas interconnector. This is a worthwhile project that is needed both for Ukraine and Poland, but it is a spare option thatUkraine can use, but do not make a strategic bet on it, so as not to get into a situation when somebody would turn off a gas tap from the West.
