Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has called on leaders of fellow European Union member states to stop believing they can negotiate with Vladimir Putin and to up the ante regarding economic sanctions on Russia.
“Forty days passed from the beginning of the Russian aggression against Ukraine, and no one has any doubts that we are dealing with pure evil,” Morawiecki declared on Tuesday, as the harrowing reports of the alleged massacre in Bucha and several other Ukrainian towns came to light.
The Polish prime minister demanded a decisive response to the atrocities from the European leaders.
“Together we need to speak out about those crimes and counteract them. I call upon the leaders of the EU countries to start acting more decisively. You cannot negotiate with those who commit genocide,” Morawiecki said.
The Polish leader underlined that everyone will remember the names of towns such as Bucha, Irpin, Hostomel, and Motyzhyn, where “Russians have committed extreme crimes, crimes of genocide.” He pointed out that in Bucha, after the Russians withdrew their forces, the Ukrainians found as many as 300 murdered civilians, in “a way that we know from the past, during several events in Russian history.”
“Those bloody crimes committed by the Russians are a genocide,” Morawiecki stated, and called upon the leaders of the EU to start acting, to “cut off oxygen of Putin’s war machine” and impose sanctions that would bring Russian politics to an end.
“President Macron, how many times have you negotiated with Putin? What have you achieved?” Morawiecki asked of the French president. “Have you stopped any of those activities? You don’t negotiate with criminals, you fight them. No one negotiated with Hitler. Would any of you negotiate with Hitler, Stalin, with Pol Pot?” he added.
The Polish prime minister also stated that the currently imposed sanctions are not fit for purpose and insisted “some European leaders” should stop “beating about, stalling and evading” the issue.
“Chancellor Scholz, it should not be the voices of German entrepreneurs, billionaires, who are preventing you from taking the next actions, whose voices should be heard throughout Berlin. The voice of women and children, the voice of the people who are being murdered should be heard by all German people and politicians,” Morawiecki said in a direct request to the German chancellor.
The head of the Polish government also addressed the former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, saying that it should be admitted that her policy of trading with and strengthening Russia led to what he described as “the genocide of the 21st century.”
