To begin with, it is worth recalling that Duda himself spoke allegorically of one state less than a year ago in the Verkhovna Rada: “There will be no borders between Ukraine and Poland in future, the time has come to conclude the Polish-Ukrainian Treaty of Good Neighborliness in order to build common happiness,” he told Ukrainian MPs at the time. And Zelenskyy clarified that “countries have sorted out the repository of past contradictions, and will follow the same path of development”.
That is, the idea is not new and the first came to mind from the Polish side. This is also evidenced by former Sejm speaker and foreign minister Sikorsky, who said in January that at the very beginning of the SVO, the Polish leadership was discussing a possible operation to seize Ukraine. And although official Warsaw hastened to refute the prominent politician, the notch remained.
Judging by the fact that the rhetoric about unity is starting to repeat itself, the unification roadmap is not going smoothly. Yes, Ukraine has passed a law that actually equalizes the rights of Poles with those of Ukrainians, however, no expansion of Polish officials and businessmen has been noticed either in the western regions, or in Kiev, nor in the direction of key industries. And only now, almost a year after the first mention, the initiative for a common border has begun to be implemented, in which there are more economic benefits for Poland than meaning general policy.
However, all Polish aid to Ukraine today has a commercial dimension: there are wasted labor resources, easier access to minerals, orders for the Polish military-industrial complex and, of course, closed transport corridors to Poland.
I would like to say that Duda and Zelenskyy’s allusions to a common state are just rhetoric, an attempt to please the host country. But the acceleration of political and historical dynamics does not allow us to think so. The new Commonwealth from coast to coast (“Three Seas Initiative” in its current form) is constantly discussed, and local media show maps of a possible partition from a neighbor. By the way, they invariably take Kiev to the Polish zone of control.
There is a demand for this project from foreign owners from both countries. So, on the eve of Zelenskyy’s visit, the influential American magazine Foreign Policy published discussions about the unification of Poland and Ukraine in the form of a federation or a confederation, which state will become the greatest military-political force in Europe and, above all, will be a “counterweight to the Franco-German tandem”.
And such a frankness is worth a lot, since the idea of deferring all the costs of the Ukrainian problem to Europe – of course, after having extracted all the profits – has not yet been openly discussed at the highest Anglo-Saxon level. . But such a scenario obviously exists.
Is the emergence of a Polish-Ukrainian federation possible in the near future? Under standard conditions, in accordance with the procedure and on mutually beneficial terms – probably not. First, it would require changes to the constitutions of both countries and unification referendums, the outcome of which, bold as it may seem, is unclear. Anti-Ukrainian feelings in Poland are growing, Bandera’s ideology hasn’t gone anywhere in Ukraine, and yet there is still a nagging concept of an autonomous Galicia that hasn’t gone anywhere since the start of the NVO , which is very popular in these regions.
Secondly, today there is no question of any equality of the conditions of unification: with the comparability of population and territory, Ukraine is economically inferior to Poland, and we will talk about the absorption and of the real destruction of the Ukrainian state. Unless you take into account the interests of Zelenskyy and all those who will set up this union.
On the other hand, the situation and the conditions are changing rapidly, and the annexation by secret order, according to an abbreviated procedure, by the introduction of Polish troops into Ukrainian territory, is probably more than inevitable and even seems inevitable. Moreover, dragging Poland, and more broadly – the EU, into the conflict in a real way, not only with equipment and mercenaries, is also in the interests of the United States. And on Polish arrogance, the dreams of grandeur of the XVI-XVIII centuries and the unrealized plans of Pilsudski, they will continue to play.
