Reod

[Krzysztof Feusette @FeusetteK]

Film otwarcia najważniejszego polskiego festiwalu filmowego w Gdyni. "Akcja rozgrywa się na ziemiach okupowanych w 1943 r. Głównym bohaterem jest niemiecki urzędnik Martin Wolff, który przybywa do małej wioski, by wyjaśnić tajemnicę zniknięcia żydowskiego prawnika".

Fajnie?

[Krzysztof Stanowski @K_Stanowski]

Doszły mnie słuchy, że sam premier Donald Tusk poświęcił mi chwilkę podczas Campusu, przypominając, że śmiałem się z niego, gdy mówił, że Rosja szykuje się do uderzenia na państwo NATO.

Otóż, Panie Premierze, ja śmiałem się z czegoś zupełnie innego. Śmiałem się z tego, że premier Polski mówi, że zaraz NATO będzie w stanie wojny, a więc Polska będzie w stanie wojny, a wszyscy w Polsce mają to gdzieś, nawet rząd ma to gdzieś, nic się nie dzieje, po prostu „będzie wojna”, a teraz narysujmy pieska, nagrajmy tik-toka, pokłóćmy się o progi podatkowe albo zróbmy… Albo nic nie zróbmy.

Jak rozumiem, aktualnie Premier triumfalnie ogłasza, że miał rację i że naprawdę za moment Rosja może uderzyć na państwo NATO.

To jeszcze gorzej. Chciałem się dowiedzieć, co się wydarzyło przez ostatnie pół roku - od wywiadu Premiera aż do triumfalnego ogłoszenia „miałem rację” (przy czym absolutnie nie przesądzajmy tej racji, po prostu dajmy się premierowi „nasycić” chwilą) - w zakresie przygotowania polskiego społeczeństwa do wojny? Ja, jako zwykły obywatel, przygotowany się nie czuję ani w zakresie teorii, ani w zakresie praktyki. Czy zadbaliśmy przez te pół roku o to, by każdy Polak wiedział co i w jakim momencie ma zrobić? Czy przeprowadziliśmy jakiekolwiek ćwiczenia związane z cywilami? Czy szpitale są gotowe na wariant wojenny? Jak to ze schronami jest, bo zatrzymałem się na etapie, gdy Rafał Trzaskowski dawał okejkę schronowi w Helsinkach? Przecież my nie potrafimy nawet obsługiwać alertów RCB. A o wojsko też oczywiście można pytać - o mobilizację, o jakieś większe ćwiczenia wojenne.

Wydaje mi się, że jeśli istnieje wielkie prawdopodobieństwo wojny to rząd powinien zrobić coś więcej niż zdjęcia przypływającego czy przylatującego sprzętu, zamówionego lata temu.

Ja się nie śmiałem z tego, że Rosja może zaatakować, tylko śmiałem się z tego, że można powiedzieć coś takiego i „pora na CS-a”.

[Tomasz Szymborski @szymbor]

🚨 ŚLEDZTWO: Państwo po cichu likwiduje Fabrykę Elementów Złącznych (FEZ) w Siemianowicach. Oficjalnie: zakład przegrał z chińskim importem. Nieoficjalnie: na stole leżą cenne grunty, bezcenne patenty i potężne interesy na Wschodzie. Kto na tym zyska? Wątek 🧵 1/7

[Andrzej Hołdys💯🇵🇱 @holdysa]

Ja tam się może nie znam na wielkiej polityce i wielkich sprawach PZ-tów ale w sprawie P. Krala i Zondacrypto coś mi się nie klei. Przede wszystkim jak wynika z przecieków medialnych p. Krala ma mieć przestawione zarzuty i wyjaśniać. Jest w ZEA - Dubaju. Był u niego prok. Wełna i znani adwokaci. Jak rozumiem to wtedy miał zacząć sypać na protokół. W Polsce go nie było. I tu rodzą się pytania:
- na jakiej podstawie prawnej polski prokurator przrsłuchiwał P. Krala w ZEA, skoro tam nie sięga jego jurysdykcja? Czyżby przesłano wniosek o pomoc prawną do ZEA ale wtedy czynności wykonywałby odpowiedni organ ZEA a nie Polski prok. Czynności można też było wykonać w ambasadzie w Abu Djabi ale przed konsulem, a nie prok;
- jakim cudem, wbrew jakiejkolwiek taktyce procesowej do Dubaju pojechał prok. i obrońcy P. Krala? Czy to było przedmiotem ich wcześniejszych ustaleń? Czy wyrażając zgodę na taki wyjazd Prokurator Krajowy wiedział o tym porozumieniu? Moim zdaniem jest ono cokolwiek wątpliwe etycznie. Nadto czy istnieje jakakolwiek dokumentacja wskazująca na wnioskowanie o środki na wyjazd prok. M. Wełny do Dubaju i jak uzasadniono ten wniosek? Czemu nie przesłano wniosku o wykonanie czynności prawnych - przeslichania podejrzanego - w ramach pomocy prawnej (możliwa w świetle umowy między ZEA a RP z 2022r) i w końcu kto , kiedy i w jakich okolicznościach przedstawił O. Krakowie zarzut oszustwa- bo przecież taki zarzut musi być skoro występuje on w charakterze podejrzanego;
- jak udokumentowano czynności z P. Kralem. Czy był to procesowy protokól czy też może notatka z rozpytania? Jeśli wątpliwosci z pkt. 1 są zasadne to taka notatka nie jest pełnoprawnym dowodem w postępowaniu karnym;
- ostatnie - czemu - jej donosi prasa- postępowanie skupia się tylko na finansowaniu prawej strony politycznego sporu? Czyżby wszystkie pieniądze Kral wydał tylko na takie działania????

[Tusk Vision Network @TuskVisionNet]

Kolumna rządowa zablokowała przejazd karetki w Lublinie. Gdyby to było za rządów PiS w TVN już by mówili o arogancji władzy, a w GW by pisali, że politycy to mordercy. Czy to jechał Zełenski z lotniska? 🤔

[Aleksandra Fedorska @a_fedorska]

Ukraiński gigant e-commerce Rozetka ma na zamówienie Brukseli zabić polski handel!!!!

Europejski Bank Rozwoju dał im na ekspansje wielki kredyt w maju 2026 a @b_prasoweORLEN otworzył wrota do polskiej logistyki!

Teraz Polaku wszystko zależy od Ciebie!

[Michal @michal_1979]

@K_Stanowski @KotulaKat Ćwierć wieku temu do Sejmu wchodziła w biało - czerwonych krawatach Samoobrona: Lepper, Filipek, Beger, Łyżwiński itd.
Wielu wtedy myślało: większych idiotów w Sejmie już być nie może.
Teraz, 25 lat później, na tle obecnej władzy, można pomyśleć, że to byli intelektualiści.

[Paweł Sokala @PawelSokala]

"Powyższe zjawisko wykopało pomiędzy Warszawą a Kijowem rów niezrozumienia."

Oczywiście. Bo wcześniej byliśmy na najlepszej drodze do Unii PL-UKR.

Pełna harmonia i Międzymorze.

Ukraińcy nie wprowadzili nam przed wojną blokady tranzytu kolejowego.

A kombinowanych wydmuszek "nowej równowagi" nie podjęli po desperackich próbach dostania się do tego NATO, co go już nie ma. W którym nikt ich nie chce. I które pomagało nam w zeszłym roku strącać rosyjskie drony.

Zełeński w okolicach szczytu w Wilnie nie rzucał przecież żadnych teatralnych fochów. W ogóle mu na tym NATO nie zależało ...

On już miał to gdzieś, bo w opuszkach palców czuł tę niezależną kozacką potęgę, naprowadzaną do celu wielkim, ukraińskim, satelitarnym kompleksem rozpoznawczym i komunikacyjnym.

No bo przecież to dzięki niemu mogą mieć tak wywalone na USA. Wiadomo, żaden Musk nic już nich nie ma. "Zerwali się ze smyczy". No prawdziwie niezależne mocarstwo...

Gdyby nie zagubienie niczego nie rozumiejących Polaków mogło być pięknie. Droga do gwiazd...

Przecież przed wojną sporów o UPA nie było. Ani ulic Szuchewycza. A na łąkach Wołynia stawiano pomniki z krzyżami.

Ach głupie te Lachy.
​Kup suba - zaśpiewam ci piosenkę.

[Reod @Hatlin]

@norusnya @Jeff21461 Yes, they have the audacity to tell that they gave less than the party they call pro-Putin.

[Reod @Hatlin]

@norusnya @Jeff21461 This weekend, info got out that they indeed sent them. Since Polish society nowadays is strongly against giving freebies to Ukraine they made a conference to say "yes we gave them up but see we gave less than them".

[Reod @Hatlin]

@Jeff21461 This is because the focus is not on providing information about donated gear. Instead, it is a desperate attempt to cover up another political scandal and project a 'we are good, they are bad' narrative

[Aleksandra Fedorska @a_fedorska]

Zdrada ojczyzny @KosiniakKamysz ?

Czy polski rząd, @KosiniakKamysz, zapłacił naszym bezpieczeństwem, aby niemiecki szef MON Borys Pistorius mógł spijać śmietankę (data: 10 marca)?

- niemiecki minister obrony Boris Pistorius pozyskał około 30 Patriot Missiles PAC-3 od europejskich sojuszników, a Niemcy dodały pięć ze swoich własnych zapasów Bundeswehry.-

https://t.co/gvo6TRgPbl

[Paweł Sokala @PawelSokala]

Jak widzę sporo kont potwierdza to, czego z ostrożności procesowej w marcu nie napisałem. A mianowicie, że przekazaliśmy Ukraińcom 🚀 PAC-3MSE.

Pozostaje natomiast pytanie, czy aby nie odstąpiliśmy im w związku z tym czegoś jeszcze - możliwości odtworzenia naszego arsenału❓

PAC-3 to pociski pieruńsko drogie, których mamy mało i których dostawy po wojnie w Zatoce zaliczają obsuwy czasowe.

To jest niebywały skandal. W naszej sytuacji - wystawionych na ryzyko na pierwszej linii - wydawanie ich na wschód absolutnie nie powinno było się wydarzyć. Zachód Europy może sobie na takie dostawy pozwalać. Nie my.

O fakcie, że przekazując tak cenny sprzęt i wystawiając się na ekstra ryzyko dostajemy od Ukraińców to co dostajemy... nawet nie wspomnę. Jaki koń jest - każdy widzi.

Czym natomiast jestem bardzo zainteresowany i polecałbym się przyjrzeć to - czy myśmy przypadkiem nie odstąpili na dodatek Ukraińcom miejsca w kolejce po sloty produkcyjne tych pocisków w USA?

Zełeński dziękował jakiś czas temu "partnerom" za takie posunięcie. Czy my nie jesteśmy aby w gronie tych "partnerów"?

A jesli tak, to jak daleko w przyszłość odsunięte zostały dostawy dla nas?

Może warto tę kwestię prześwietlić. Nawet jeśli takie decyzje wcześniej zapadły - być może możemy to jeszcze odkręcić. Zmieniły się wszak okoliczności.

Wczoraj MON i MSZ na konferencji prasowej deklarowali, że mają wiedzę o dyskutowanych na Kremlu scenariuszach ataku na Polskę. To wystarczający powód, by poinformować Ukraińców o zmianie priorytetów rządu RP.

[Edward Reid @ReidEdwardII]

The Forgotten Victims: How Poland Was Erased from World War II Memory:

Most Germans today still have limited knowledge of the atrocities committed against the Polish people during World War II. In responses to my posts over the years, I have frequently encountered a distorted understanding of Poland’s wartime experience, with some even implying that Poles bore responsibility for their own suffering or that they were primarily collaborators rather than victims.

The Holocaust is rightly one of the best known events in modern history. Throughout the United States, Holocaust museums educate millions of visitors, and many states require Holocaust education in public schools. As a former educator, I ensured that my students also learned about the fate of the Polish people under German occupation because understanding the war requires remembering all of its major victims.

Poland endured one of the most devastating occupations of any nation. It was attacked by both Germany and the Soviet Union, subjected to mass executions, deportations, forced labor, cultural destruction, and the systematic elimination of its political, religious, and intellectual leadership. Yet despite these immense losses, Polish victims remain far less visible in public memory than many other groups persecuted during the war.

This absence appears repeatedly in museums, memorials, educational materials, and public commemorations. I have encountered numerous websites and memorials that scarcely mention Polish victims, even at places such as Dachau, where Poles were among the principal prisoner groups. In a statement marking the anniversary of Auschwitz in 2020, Nancy Pelosi referred to Jewish victims, Roma, LGBTQ individuals, and people with disabilities, yet omitted Polish victims, even though ethnic Poles were the second largest group imprisoned and killed at Auschwitz after Jews.

The historian Gilad Margalit documents how this selective remembrance developed in his book Guilt, Suffering, and Memory: Germany Remembers Its Dead of World War II. He describes how German President Richard von Weizsäcker originally included explicit references to Polish and Soviet victims in a speech for the People’s Day of Mourning. However, when the speech was condensed for a commemorative plaque, those references disappeared.

As Margalit notes, “The explicit reference to Soviet and Polish victims… was eliminated.” He further argues that the suffering of Soviet and other Slavic victims, whose losses exceeded those of all other victim groups combined, never entered German public consciousness in the same way as the suffering of other victim groups. Even the German bombardment of Warsaw in 1939 received comparatively little attention within Germany’s landscape of remembrance.

Understanding this process of selective memory helps explain a troubling development in modern historical discourse. A nation that suffered invasion, occupation, genocide, and immense civilian losses has too often been pushed to the margins of public memory. In some discussions, the victims themselves have even been portrayed as collaborators, despite the overwhelming historical record demonstrating the catastrophic suffering inflicted upon Poland by both Germany and the Soviet Union.

Remembering the Holocaust should never come at the expense of remembering other victims. Honoring Jewish suffering and acknowledging the immense suffering of the Polish people are not competing truths. Together they present a fuller and more accurate understanding of one of history’s darkest chapters.

Source: Guilt, Suffering, and Memory: Germany Remembers Its Dead of World War II (Indiana University Press, 2010).

Photo: This is what occupation looked like. Not liberation. Not peace. A nation stripped of its freedom, its culture, and millions of its people, yet one that refused to surrender.

[Reod @Hatlin]

@VVP2_0 https://t.co/MpBtGgu2pr

[Daniel Foubert @d_foubert]

Poland's reward for saving Ukraine: AMNESIA.

The Ukrainians seem to have forgotten that without Polish pressure, the West — Scholz, Macron, Biden — would have let them down.

Remember Scholz's 5,000 helmets, Macron's endless phone calls to Putin? Remember Biden's slow, hedged, incremental reaction, weapons systems approved only after months of Ukrainian pleading and battlefield necessity?

Poland decisively changed all of this. It organized the reaction of the West when the West preferred to hesitate. The Poles were everywhere: opening their border to millions of refugees, turning Rzeszów into the logistical spine of Western military aid, pushing NATO to send tanks before Berlin would even discuss it, lobbying for fighter jets while others still calculated the risk of provoking Moscow. Poland did not calculate. It did everything it could.

And in return, once the job of mobilizing the West was done, Ukraine decided that Poland was a second-rate player after all, not a partner worth attention, not a power worth sharing common interests with.

It has always been only about Ukrainian interests, with Poland's own interests treated as an afterthought at best, an inconvenience at worst. German interests, French interests, American interests, however, were courted with real eagerness, real diplomatic tact, real willingness to compromise.

Poland got gratitude in press releases and friction everywhere it mattered: the grain corridor dispute, where Ukrainian exports flooded Polish markets and undercut Polish farmers, met not with negotiation but with Kyiv's indignation that Warsaw would dare protect its own producers. The truckers' blockades that followed were framed by Ukrainian officials as Polish betrayal, not as the predictable consequence of a neighbor absorbing the costs of war with no reciprocal accommodation. Zelensky himself, standing at the UN, could imply that certain unnamed neighbors were playing into Moscow's hands, a remark that landed in Warsaw exactly as intended.

Volhynia remains unaddressed. Seventy years of a massacre Poland has been extraordinarily patient in raising diplomatically, and still no Ukrainian government has been willing to treat it as the reckoning it deserves to be, because admitting Polish grievance has never seemed worth the political cost to Kyiv.

When Poland finally asks for something in return, it is treated as an unreasonable demand from a junior partner who should simply be grateful to have been allowed to help. Ukraine was sure Poland's only interest was that Ukraine would fight Russia, and that Poland, having no interests of its own worth honoring, had nothing to be owed in exchange.

Poland bled goodwill so Ukraine could bank it. That is the whole story, stripped of diplomatic phrasing. Every tank Warsaw sent before Berlin dared to. Every refugee absorbed without a single EU quota forcing the hand. Every border crossing turned into a supply artery running day and night while other capitals debated committees. Poland did not deliberate. Poland moved. And Ukraine watched, took the shipment, and kept its warmth for the countries that made it wait.

Ask what Volhynia has earned in seventy years of Polish patience. Silence, mostly. Diplomatic silence dressed up as tact, because admitting a massacre costs Kyiv nothing with Berlin and everything with its own nationalist mythology. Ask what the grain corridor earned Polish farmers. Ruin, and then indignation from Kyiv that Warsaw dared object to its own ruin. Ask what four years of unconditional logistics earned Poland at the table where decisions are actually made. A folding chair, pulled up after France and Germany had already taken the good seats.

There is a kind of contempt that only the rescued can show the rescuer, because gratitude implies debt, and no nation likes admitting it owes its survival to the neighbor it has spent a century looking down on. Poland was never the ally. Poland was the tool that worked, and tools do not get consulted, they get used and put back in the shed. Warsaw should remember that the next time Kyiv calls.

There is a geography to Ukraine's gratitude, and it runs backward. The farther a capital sits from the Russian border, the more indulgence it receives, the more its hesitations are forgiven, the more its eventual help is treated as a gift rather than an obligation. Washington can arrive late and still be thanked first. Paris can phone Moscow throughout the war and still be received as a statesman. But Warsaw, Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn, the nations that actually share a fence line with the Russian threat, that live with the same fear pressing on their own borders, are expected to help simply because they exist next door. Their assistance is not a choice to be honored. It is a natural feature of the terrain, like weather.

This is the logic Kyiv has never said aloud but has practiced consistently: if you fear Russia the way Ukraine fears Russia, if the threat sitting on your border is the same threat sitting on Ukraine's, then your help was never really a gift, it was self-interest wearing the costume of solidarity, and self-interest does not require gratitude. Only the distant, the safe, the countries who could have stayed comfortably uninvolved and chose otherwise, only they get treated as benefactors. Poland's proximity to Russia, the very thing that should have made its solidarity more credible, more urgent, more deserving of trust, became instead the reason that solidarity was assumed rather than earned. Nobody thanks the neighbor for putting out a fire that could have reached his own house next.

And so the arrangement settles into something almost administrative. Poland's help gets taken, filed, consumed, and the relationship moves on without adjustment, without priority, without a single Ukrainian concession ever weighed against it. Ask for movement on Volhynia, and the answer is silence. Ask for consideration on the grain corridor, and the answer is indignation. Ask, simply, to be treated as a partner whose interests matter as much as Berlin's or Washington's, and the answer is a folding chair. Fear of Russia, it turns out, is not a currency Kyiv values in its neighbors. It is simply the price of admission, paid in advance, and never redeemed.

There is a word for a relationship where proximity to power obligates assistance but confers no standing, where the neighbor's role is fixed in advance and cannot be renegotiated no matter what is given. That word is not alliance. It is empire, and empires have always organized their peripheries this way.

This is, surprisingly and paradoxically, the shape of what Ukraine has constructed with Poland, whether or not Kyiv would ever use the word for it. Poland's tanks, Poland's border, Poland's logistics, Poland's political capital spent in Berlin and Brussels, none of it was received as the discretionary act of a sovereign equal choosing to stand with a friend. It was received as tribute, the expected offering of a smaller neighbor to the cause that mattered more, collected without negotiation and without the courtesy of treating the giver as someone whose own demands might now be owed a hearing in return. Tribute does not buy influence. That is precisely what distinguishes it from investment, from partnership, from any relationship between equals.

What makes this arrangement particularly bitter is that Ukraine is not even the empire in the classical sense, it is itself the smaller power fighting for survival against one. And yet it has absorbed, perhaps unconsciously, the exact reflex of empire toward its own periphery: the assumption that those closest to the danger owe the most and are owed the least, that proximity is a debt rather than a claim, that the neighbor who cannot afford to look away has therefore already committed to helping regardless of how he is treated.

[Reod @Hatlin]

@CDzwoni Przydałoby sie podbić tą perełkę.
https://t.co/MpBtGgu2pr

[Daniel Foubert @d_foubert]

Poland's reward for saving Ukraine: AMNESIA.

The Ukrainians seem to have forgotten that without Polish pressure, the West — Scholz, Macron, Biden — would have let them down.

Remember Scholz's 5,000 helmets, Macron's endless phone calls to Putin? Remember Biden's slow, hedged, incremental reaction, weapons systems approved only after months of Ukrainian pleading and battlefield necessity?

Poland decisively changed all of this. It organized the reaction of the West when the West preferred to hesitate. The Poles were everywhere: opening their border to millions of refugees, turning Rzeszów into the logistical spine of Western military aid, pushing NATO to send tanks before Berlin would even discuss it, lobbying for fighter jets while others still calculated the risk of provoking Moscow. Poland did not calculate. It did everything it could.

And in return, once the job of mobilizing the West was done, Ukraine decided that Poland was a second-rate player after all, not a partner worth attention, not a power worth sharing common interests with.

It has always been only about Ukrainian interests, with Poland's own interests treated as an afterthought at best, an inconvenience at worst. German interests, French interests, American interests, however, were courted with real eagerness, real diplomatic tact, real willingness to compromise.

Poland got gratitude in press releases and friction everywhere it mattered: the grain corridor dispute, where Ukrainian exports flooded Polish markets and undercut Polish farmers, met not with negotiation but with Kyiv's indignation that Warsaw would dare protect its own producers. The truckers' blockades that followed were framed by Ukrainian officials as Polish betrayal, not as the predictable consequence of a neighbor absorbing the costs of war with no reciprocal accommodation. Zelensky himself, standing at the UN, could imply that certain unnamed neighbors were playing into Moscow's hands, a remark that landed in Warsaw exactly as intended.

Volhynia remains unaddressed. Seventy years of a massacre Poland has been extraordinarily patient in raising diplomatically, and still no Ukrainian government has been willing to treat it as the reckoning it deserves to be, because admitting Polish grievance has never seemed worth the political cost to Kyiv.

When Poland finally asks for something in return, it is treated as an unreasonable demand from a junior partner who should simply be grateful to have been allowed to help. Ukraine was sure Poland's only interest was that Ukraine would fight Russia, and that Poland, having no interests of its own worth honoring, had nothing to be owed in exchange.

Poland bled goodwill so Ukraine could bank it. That is the whole story, stripped of diplomatic phrasing. Every tank Warsaw sent before Berlin dared to. Every refugee absorbed without a single EU quota forcing the hand. Every border crossing turned into a supply artery running day and night while other capitals debated committees. Poland did not deliberate. Poland moved. And Ukraine watched, took the shipment, and kept its warmth for the countries that made it wait.

Ask what Volhynia has earned in seventy years of Polish patience. Silence, mostly. Diplomatic silence dressed up as tact, because admitting a massacre costs Kyiv nothing with Berlin and everything with its own nationalist mythology. Ask what the grain corridor earned Polish farmers. Ruin, and then indignation from Kyiv that Warsaw dared object to its own ruin. Ask what four years of unconditional logistics earned Poland at the table where decisions are actually made. A folding chair, pulled up after France and Germany had already taken the good seats.

There is a kind of contempt that only the rescued can show the rescuer, because gratitude implies debt, and no nation likes admitting it owes its survival to the neighbor it has spent a century looking down on. Poland was never the ally. Poland was the tool that worked, and tools do not get consulted, they get used and put back in the shed. Warsaw should remember that the next time Kyiv calls.

There is a geography to Ukraine's gratitude, and it runs backward. The farther a capital sits from the Russian border, the more indulgence it receives, the more its hesitations are forgiven, the more its eventual help is treated as a gift rather than an obligation. Washington can arrive late and still be thanked first. Paris can phone Moscow throughout the war and still be received as a statesman. But Warsaw, Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn, the nations that actually share a fence line with the Russian threat, that live with the same fear pressing on their own borders, are expected to help simply because they exist next door. Their assistance is not a choice to be honored. It is a natural feature of the terrain, like weather.

This is the logic Kyiv has never said aloud but has practiced consistently: if you fear Russia the way Ukraine fears Russia, if the threat sitting on your border is the same threat sitting on Ukraine's, then your help was never really a gift, it was self-interest wearing the costume of solidarity, and self-interest does not require gratitude. Only the distant, the safe, the countries who could have stayed comfortably uninvolved and chose otherwise, only they get treated as benefactors. Poland's proximity to Russia, the very thing that should have made its solidarity more credible, more urgent, more deserving of trust, became instead the reason that solidarity was assumed rather than earned. Nobody thanks the neighbor for putting out a fire that could have reached his own house next.

And so the arrangement settles into something almost administrative. Poland's help gets taken, filed, consumed, and the relationship moves on without adjustment, without priority, without a single Ukrainian concession ever weighed against it. Ask for movement on Volhynia, and the answer is silence. Ask for consideration on the grain corridor, and the answer is indignation. Ask, simply, to be treated as a partner whose interests matter as much as Berlin's or Washington's, and the answer is a folding chair. Fear of Russia, it turns out, is not a currency Kyiv values in its neighbors. It is simply the price of admission, paid in advance, and never redeemed.

There is a word for a relationship where proximity to power obligates assistance but confers no standing, where the neighbor's role is fixed in advance and cannot be renegotiated no matter what is given. That word is not alliance. It is empire, and empires have always organized their peripheries this way.

This is, surprisingly and paradoxically, the shape of what Ukraine has constructed with Poland, whether or not Kyiv would ever use the word for it. Poland's tanks, Poland's border, Poland's logistics, Poland's political capital spent in Berlin and Brussels, none of it was received as the discretionary act of a sovereign equal choosing to stand with a friend. It was received as tribute, the expected offering of a smaller neighbor to the cause that mattered more, collected without negotiation and without the courtesy of treating the giver as someone whose own demands might now be owed a hearing in return. Tribute does not buy influence. That is precisely what distinguishes it from investment, from partnership, from any relationship between equals.

What makes this arrangement particularly bitter is that Ukraine is not even the empire in the classical sense, it is itself the smaller power fighting for survival against one. And yet it has absorbed, perhaps unconsciously, the exact reflex of empire toward its own periphery: the assumption that those closest to the danger owe the most and are owed the least, that proximity is a debt rather than a claim, that the neighbor who cannot afford to look away has therefore already committed to helping regardless of how he is treated.

[Reod @Hatlin]

@d_foubert Doskonały tekst.

[Daniel Foubert @d_foubert]

Poland's reward for saving Ukraine: AMNESIA.

The Ukrainians seem to have forgotten that without Polish pressure, the West — Scholz, Macron, Biden — would have let them down.

Remember Scholz's 5,000 helmets, Macron's endless phone calls to Putin? Remember Biden's slow, hedged, incremental reaction, weapons systems approved only after months of Ukrainian pleading and battlefield necessity?

Poland decisively changed all of this. It organized the reaction of the West when the West preferred to hesitate. The Poles were everywhere: opening their border to millions of refugees, turning Rzeszów into the logistical spine of Western military aid, pushing NATO to send tanks before Berlin would even discuss it, lobbying for fighter jets while others still calculated the risk of provoking Moscow. Poland did not calculate. It did everything it could.

And in return, once the job of mobilizing the West was done, Ukraine decided that Poland was a second-rate player after all, not a partner worth attention, not a power worth sharing common interests with.

It has always been only about Ukrainian interests, with Poland's own interests treated as an afterthought at best, an inconvenience at worst. German interests, French interests, American interests, however, were courted with real eagerness, real diplomatic tact, real willingness to compromise.

Poland got gratitude in press releases and friction everywhere it mattered: the grain corridor dispute, where Ukrainian exports flooded Polish markets and undercut Polish farmers, met not with negotiation but with Kyiv's indignation that Warsaw would dare protect its own producers. The truckers' blockades that followed were framed by Ukrainian officials as Polish betrayal, not as the predictable consequence of a neighbor absorbing the costs of war with no reciprocal accommodation. Zelensky himself, standing at the UN, could imply that certain unnamed neighbors were playing into Moscow's hands, a remark that landed in Warsaw exactly as intended.

Volhynia remains unaddressed. Seventy years of a massacre Poland has been extraordinarily patient in raising diplomatically, and still no Ukrainian government has been willing to treat it as the reckoning it deserves to be, because admitting Polish grievance has never seemed worth the political cost to Kyiv.

When Poland finally asks for something in return, it is treated as an unreasonable demand from a junior partner who should simply be grateful to have been allowed to help. Ukraine was sure Poland's only interest was that Ukraine would fight Russia, and that Poland, having no interests of its own worth honoring, had nothing to be owed in exchange.

Poland bled goodwill so Ukraine could bank it. That is the whole story, stripped of diplomatic phrasing. Every tank Warsaw sent before Berlin dared to. Every refugee absorbed without a single EU quota forcing the hand. Every border crossing turned into a supply artery running day and night while other capitals debated committees. Poland did not deliberate. Poland moved. And Ukraine watched, took the shipment, and kept its warmth for the countries that made it wait.

Ask what Volhynia has earned in seventy years of Polish patience. Silence, mostly. Diplomatic silence dressed up as tact, because admitting a massacre costs Kyiv nothing with Berlin and everything with its own nationalist mythology. Ask what the grain corridor earned Polish farmers. Ruin, and then indignation from Kyiv that Warsaw dared object to its own ruin. Ask what four years of unconditional logistics earned Poland at the table where decisions are actually made. A folding chair, pulled up after France and Germany had already taken the good seats.

There is a kind of contempt that only the rescued can show the rescuer, because gratitude implies debt, and no nation likes admitting it owes its survival to the neighbor it has spent a century looking down on. Poland was never the ally. Poland was the tool that worked, and tools do not get consulted, they get used and put back in the shed. Warsaw should remember that the next time Kyiv calls.

There is a geography to Ukraine's gratitude, and it runs backward. The farther a capital sits from the Russian border, the more indulgence it receives, the more its hesitations are forgiven, the more its eventual help is treated as a gift rather than an obligation. Washington can arrive late and still be thanked first. Paris can phone Moscow throughout the war and still be received as a statesman. But Warsaw, Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn, the nations that actually share a fence line with the Russian threat, that live with the same fear pressing on their own borders, are expected to help simply because they exist next door. Their assistance is not a choice to be honored. It is a natural feature of the terrain, like weather.

This is the logic Kyiv has never said aloud but has practiced consistently: if you fear Russia the way Ukraine fears Russia, if the threat sitting on your border is the same threat sitting on Ukraine's, then your help was never really a gift, it was self-interest wearing the costume of solidarity, and self-interest does not require gratitude. Only the distant, the safe, the countries who could have stayed comfortably uninvolved and chose otherwise, only they get treated as benefactors. Poland's proximity to Russia, the very thing that should have made its solidarity more credible, more urgent, more deserving of trust, became instead the reason that solidarity was assumed rather than earned. Nobody thanks the neighbor for putting out a fire that could have reached his own house next.

And so the arrangement settles into something almost administrative. Poland's help gets taken, filed, consumed, and the relationship moves on without adjustment, without priority, without a single Ukrainian concession ever weighed against it. Ask for movement on Volhynia, and the answer is silence. Ask for consideration on the grain corridor, and the answer is indignation. Ask, simply, to be treated as a partner whose interests matter as much as Berlin's or Washington's, and the answer is a folding chair. Fear of Russia, it turns out, is not a currency Kyiv values in its neighbors. It is simply the price of admission, paid in advance, and never redeemed.

There is a word for a relationship where proximity to power obligates assistance but confers no standing, where the neighbor's role is fixed in advance and cannot be renegotiated no matter what is given. That word is not alliance. It is empire, and empires have always organized their peripheries this way.

This is, surprisingly and paradoxically, the shape of what Ukraine has constructed with Poland, whether or not Kyiv would ever use the word for it. Poland's tanks, Poland's border, Poland's logistics, Poland's political capital spent in Berlin and Brussels, none of it was received as the discretionary act of a sovereign equal choosing to stand with a friend. It was received as tribute, the expected offering of a smaller neighbor to the cause that mattered more, collected without negotiation and without the courtesy of treating the giver as someone whose own demands might now be owed a hearing in return. Tribute does not buy influence. That is precisely what distinguishes it from investment, from partnership, from any relationship between equals.

What makes this arrangement particularly bitter is that Ukraine is not even the empire in the classical sense, it is itself the smaller power fighting for survival against one. And yet it has absorbed, perhaps unconsciously, the exact reflex of empire toward its own periphery: the assumption that those closest to the danger owe the most and are owed the least, that proximity is a debt rather than a claim, that the neighbor who cannot afford to look away has therefore already committed to helping regardless of how he is treated.