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The odds that Moscow will use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine are low because Russian President Vladimir Putin knows it “would be politically and militarily suicidal,” Poland’s top diplomat in Washington said.
Polish Ambassador Marek Magierowski in an interview this week accused Moscow of using its energy exports as a weapon and cautioned against believing Kremlin propaganda about still-mysterious recent attacks on Russian gas pipelines supplying Western markets.
In a wide-ranging discussion with The Washington Times, Ambassador Magierowski said the West should increase sophisticated weaponry deliveries to Kyiv amid surging Russian missile attacks on Ukrainian cities and stressed that Poland, which shares a 330-mile border with Ukraine, strongly backs Kyiv’s pursuit of both NATO and European Union membership.
With regard to Russian tactical nukes, Ambassador Magierowski, a 51-year-old former journalist who served as Poland’s envoy to Israel before arriving in Washington last year, said the threat is familiar for Warsaw, which has vivid Cold War-era memories of being in the “cross-hairs” of U.S.-Soviet nuclear brinkmanship.
While Poland today is “concerned” about nuclear threats emanating from the Kremlin, Ambassador Magierowski noted Mr. Putin has never explicitly said Moscow is considering deploying less powerful, “tactical” nuclear bombs as Russia’s seven-month invasion of Ukraine faces mounting difficulties.
“The odds are pretty low of Mr. Putin or Russia using the nuclear card,” the ambassador said.
“If we talk about tactical nuclear weapons, mankind has never used them,” he said. “We know what the effects of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, but tactical nuclear weapons have never been used in combat, so it would be very difficult to predict what the actual impact would be of using such a warhead, for example, at the front line in Ukraine.”
“I believe that Mr. Putin is aware of that, his military is aware of that,” he said, adding that “a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine on the front line would be not only very risky in terms of the exposure of Russian troops to the blast and to the radiation, in a broader context, it would be politically and militarily suicidal for Putin and that’s why I believe he refrains now not only from using this kind of weapon but also from talking about it openly.”
The same logic should apply to the question of whether Russia is considering carrying out a conventional strike against any NATO member nation neighboring Ukraine, the ambassador said.
“I believe that Putin does realize that it would be, from his perspective, also absolutely suicidal, both politically and militarily,” he said, asserting that Moscow is well aware that NATO would consider an armed attack against any member nation an attack against them all.
Ukraine’s NATO bid
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has recently requested that NATO consider granting Ukraine an “accelerated accession” or a “fast-track” to membership in the alliance. Mr. Putin explicitly listed the possibility that Ukraine would one day join the Western military alliance as one justification for launching the invasion earlier this year.
Poland “would, of course, be happy to see Ukraine in the foreseeable future, as a NATO member,” the ambassador said, while noting that an accelerated accession is unlikely given “misgivings” among some of the alliance’s 29 other member nations.
He stressed that EU membership for Ukraine should take precedence because it could frustrate Russian attempts to undermine Kyiv economically and politically.
“What [Putin] fears most is a prosperous and wealthy Ukraine cracking down on efficiently on corruption and drawing closer to the European Union and to Europe as such, to the free world, than to ‘Mother Russia,’” Ambassador Magieroswki said.
He suggested debates over Ukrainian NATO membership should be viewed within the context of how the 1999 inclusion of Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary into the alliance changed the trajectory of regional security.
“What would the world look like if we had not joined NATO in 1999?” he asked. “We would probably be running to shelters. My fellow countrymen in Poland and my family [would be] defending our country against another Russian incursion in Central Europe.”
Better European cohesion
Mr. Zelenskyy and Ukrainian military leaders have pressed the Group of Seven countries — the world’s biggest democracies — to give Ukraine an “air shield” as Russia has renewed an air barrage targeting cities and infrastructure sites across the country in recent days.
Ambassador Magierowski said Poland remains opposed to the idea of a Western-enforced “no-fly” zone over Ukraine out of concern it would elevate the risk of direct NATO confrontation with Russia. But he said more needs to be done to deliver “state-of-the-art weaponry to Ukraine, which would allow the Ukrainian armed forces to defend their country more efficiently against Russian aggression.”
“We’re talking about long-range missile systems, anti-aircraft systems, which Ukraine badly needs right now,” the ambassador said, adding that “Europe could do more” and that “Europe and the European Union should be more united in terms of our political and military assistance to Ukraine.”
“Poland has been one of the leading countries in terms of weapons deliveries to Ukraine and I believe the Polish government will be steadfast in its determination to keep…delivering anti-aircraft systems, self-propelled howitzers and tanks to Ukraine,” he said.
Poland has also taken in some three million Ukrainian refugees fleeing the fighting, more any other country — a reality that has fueled political strains that were simmering between Warsaw and Brussels well before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Friction between the EU and the right-leaning populist government of Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki reared its head Wednesday, with Poland’s minister for ties with the European bloc resigning from his post. The Associated Press characterized Konrad Szymanski’s departure as a weakening of the Morawiecki government at a moment of rising political tensions in Warsaw over Europe’s energy crisis and ways of countering inflation and rising costs of living.
With Poland seeking European financial assistance to deal with the Ukrainian refugee flow, the EU’s executive arm moved in June to unfreeze some $38 billion that had been earmarked for Poland’s domestic COVID-19 recovery programs but was blocked for more than a year by Brussels over concerns that the Warsaw government will improperly restrict the independence of the country’s judiciary.
While such issues loom in the backdrop, Ambassador Magierowski emphasized that Poland and the Baltic nations are “the leading countries in terms of military assistance to Ukraine per capita” and “would like other countries to follow suit.”
“If we look at the ratio between relative wealth of some EU member states and ours, I believe some other countries should be doing much more,” he said.
‘American troops in Poland’
The ambassador gently chided fellow EU countries for failing to heed Poland’s warnings over the past decade about the danger of becoming too reliant on Russian energy. Mr. Putin’s threats to limit or cut off entirely Russian energy exports to European markets has proven a potent source of leverage and sent governments scrambling to find alternative suppliers as the winter months approach.
“This is a very painful lesson for all of us, nevertheless Poland has been prescient all along,” he said. “Many years ago, we were already warning our partners in the European Union that Putin would one day weaponize energy and exports of Russian gas to Europe and this is what we are witnessing right now.”
Poland has been moving for years toward natural gas from non-Russian producers. In addition to opening its first LNG terminal on the Baltic Sea in 2015, Poland this year inaugurated the so-called “Baltic Pipe,” now transferring gas from the Norwegian continental shelf via Denmark to the Polish coastline.
“Now we are officially and entirely independent of imports of Russian gas, which is not the case, unfortunately in Germany or in France or in Austria or in other countries,” Ambassador Magierowski said.
The ambassador cautioned against believing “Russian propaganda” regarding the recent discovery of massive natural gas leaks into the Baltic Sea following apparent attacks that ruptured Russia’s Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines to Western Europe,
While some Western officials have suggested Russian operatives carried out the attacks in a bid to worsen the impact of the energy crisis now facing EU countries, the Kremlin has countered that the pipelines were likely sabotaged by the West in a plot to weaken Moscow’s energy leverage over Europe.
“It would be preposterous to blame the West, the United States or Poland for sabotaging the pipeline network,” Ambassador Magierowski told The Times.
He called the Poland-U.S. alliance, calling it “ironclad, steadfast and actually the most vital and most crucial in terms of Poland’s foreign policy,” asserting that Poland is committed to “trying to cooperate fruitfully with both Democratic and Republican administrations.”
The ambassador also noted what he said was President Biden’s “clear vision of what we should be doing right now in terms of assisting Ukraine.”
With Mr. Biden having announced in June that the establishment of the U.S. Army’s V Corps’ permanent headquarters in Poland, Ambassador Magierowski said Warsaw-Washington security ties are deepening.
“To put it bluntly,” he said. “We expect even more American troops in Poland.”
• Sean Salai contributed to this article.
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