Yevhen Karas, coordinator of the C14 movement: “It’s time for Ukrainians and Poles to forget the mistakes of the past. It is time to start building a common future”

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9 years ago

Abstracts of the speech delivered at the roundtable “Why is Poland turning from Ukraine’s lawyer into a prosecutor?” held on July 14 in Kyiv. Organizers: Information Center “Intermarium”, “Foundation for Support of Democratic Initiatives” with the support of the “United Union of Patriots of Ukraine”.

The relationship between the Polish and Ukrainian peoples is obviously complex: there are historical psychological traumas in both nations. There is a strong cultural tension due to the influx of Ukrainian labor migrants with mostly low levels of education. There is a factor of active provocative activities of Russian special services. Nevertheless, these contradictions seem trivial against the background of the unifying points.
Today’s Ukraine and Poland are called upon to have ambitions for a new powerful center of influence in Europe. The challenge of the Russian imperial invasion from the East clearly unites our neighboring nations. To find the real factors behind the escalation of the confrontation, it is appropriate to consider the powerful work of the Russian side.

Russian intelligence uses a rather primitive but working scheme. First, a number of paid public figures perform a provocative, scandalous action. In both Ukraine and Poland, such actions are carried out for a low fee, often by mercenaries who are completely unrelated to politics. Next, Russian professionals in social media promotion and spamming are involved. Often, an artificial provocation is promoted to an unprecedented scale and reaches the final recipient – an ordinary citizen. The latter, in turn, takes the provocation at face value and becomes very nervous. Against this background, an irreversibly final effect emerges – domestic hatred.
I think it is appropriate to consider the scheme of work in this order. Only the emergence of domestic hatred as a result of a massive storm of fakes and provocations in the public consciousness begins to generate stories of real hatred and real conflicts. This becomes the driving force for real political forces. There are genuine reactions or attacks to escalate the situation.

It is worth noting that the security forces on both sides are acting in a fairly balanced and effective manner. Poland has put the leader of Zmiana, a far-right, far-left, odious organization, behind bars. For years, Russians have been investing money and resources there. Recently, a group of Polish radicals who tried to stop and verbally abused participants in a Ukrainian march were sentenced to real prison terms. In July, Ukrainian special services miraculously managed to prevent a paid attempt to imitate an attack on the Polish embassy (despite the fact that the Russians managed to fire a grenade launcher at the Polish consulate in Lutsk)
But still, the Ukrainian side later managed to document and expose the scheme of organizing a pseudo-Polish road blockade in Ukraine. The organizer was a Kyiv separatist who fled to the Russian-occupied territories. Despite the radical attacks on Ukraine by some representatives of the Polish government and political elite, there is a general reluctance of the current Polish government to stir up hatred. For now. The Ukrainian side is definitely not interested in games of hate speech on the western borders, so verbally our side is seeking understanding.

At the same time, it should be understood that the Polish side is slowly moving towards the agenda of chauvinists, who are widely encouraged by Russian intelligence scandals. Sooner or later, the Polish authorities may lurch toward unconstructive unfriendly actions. To neutralize such a threat, preventive work by law enforcement agencies is not enough; a deep political and cultural dialogue between the two sides is needed.

Few Polish radicals have any idea what a real war means. None of them realize the current scale of Russia’s threat to Europe. The blindness of the Polish chauvinists was not even burned away by the fire at the site of the assassination of President Lech Kaczynski by Russian special services near Smolensk. Modern history has an unprecedented example of Russians killing dozens of representatives of the political elite of another country. Nevertheless, the West-2017 exercises are brewing, when Russia will deploy more than ten thousand troops to the territory of Belarus. And everyone suspects that these troops will remain there.
And then the threat of Russia emerges from a new angle for Poland. It is very close.
Nowadays, few people remember that Russian intelligence is active in the Baltic states, and there is a different game there. There, Polish “wadders” play the role of separatists in Lithuania with Russian money. Together with the Russians, they conduct election campaigns. The Poles are sorely mistaken if they think that Russia will pass up the chance to blackmail its contingent in Belarus to provoke “peacekeeping” operations to “protect” real or imaginary “minorities” in Poland or Lithuania. The Kremlin horde is getting closer to Poland. And it is time for Ukrainians and Poles to forget the mistakes of the past. It is time to start building a common future.
It is common, if we do not want to repeat the bitter experience of Soviet occupation.