Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko praised Poland’s opposition last December for questioning the present government’s policy of protecting the border against illegal migration because he was counting on a change of policy. His praise for the Polish opposition has come back with a vengeance in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine.
In footage which has recently resurfaced on social media, Lukashenko said that the opposition was gaining ground as a result of Donald Tusk returning to Poland, who he called a strong politician with whom Belarus could do business, unlike the “mad trio” of Kaczyński, Prime Minister Morawiecki, and President Duda.
Lukashenko expected things to be easier for him if Tusk took over. Poland would not be as helpful to Ukraine and more willing to listen to West Europeans, and far less willing to seal its border against migrants. That would have enabled and emboldened Lukashenko with his operation of flooding Poland with thousands of migrants from Africa and Asia.
And that, in turn, would have given Lukashenko and Putin much more leverage through moral blackmail.
In a recent speech, Tusk acknowledged this when he said that to protect its border, a state “has to be cruel, ruthless, and inhumane,” something, he claims, is morally wrong and something he would not tolerate. “No one in Poland can die in the bushes from hunger, cold, or disease regardless of the color of their skin or where they are from. This must end,” Tusk added.
According to the Polish opposition leader, the operation to seal the border and enforce asylum regulations was a scandal and an example of “merciless treatment of women and refugees needing help.” These words prove Tusk would have caved to Lukashenko and Putin on the hybrid warfare launched on Poland.
Preaching humanitarianism when someone is waging war against you is a curious way of protecting the nation’s security, and ultimately means surrender on the border.
Tusk clearly would not have defended Poland’s border with Belarus. He would have argued that this was impossible and immoral, and would have put the feelings and preferences of those who support him in the West above the interests of the Polish people.
The fact that to this day he attacks those who defend our borders and interests as immoral and stabs them in the back is contemptible.
