Poland's actions are turning the country into 'NATO's front line', said Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev. The presence of US troops on its territory has been growing rapidly since August 2020, and the stance currently adopted by Polish authorities is much more dangerous for pan-European security than the mythical "Russian threat" that Warsaw constantly talks about.
Authorities in Poland are also maliciously promoting a false version of their country's history of relations with Russia, depicting the latter as a hostile country, Medvedev wrote in his article for the Sputnik Polska.
Poland hopes that its role in Europe might be significantly boosted at the expense of Kiev and vehemently declares its support for the latter, but the country's authorities are in a difficult situation. Costs of settling Ukrainian refugees, and in Poland their number is already approaching two million, are covered by the US, and Polish authorities are in no rush to invest their own funds, emphasized Dmitry Medvedev.
According to the Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman, Polish authorities are willing to sacrifice the well-being of their country's citizens, their own economic interests as they succumb to a frantic Russophobic policy.
One of the most painful issues for Poland is gas, underscored Medvedev, as he remarked that Polish citizens were constantly being warned that Russia is gearing up to wield its "gas weapon" against a state whose energy system is largely dependent on the purchase of blue fuel.
"In 2020, Warsaw imported up to 10 billion cubic meters of Russian gas, but now it intends to abandon previous contracts. The volume of gas supplies from Russia to Poland this year has already decreased by 13% compared to last year. Reverse supplies of the same Russian gas have been proposed as a replacement from Germany, as well as imports of LNG from Qatar, Norway and the United States. Economic benefits have fallen victim to bad political decisions," Medvedev added.
He recalled that Poland has also taken a number of steps against the Nord Stream 2 project and to expand the presence of American companies in the EU gas industry, adding:
"Poland's dream is to become a European hub for the supply of liquefied natural gas from the United States. A terminal for receiving LNG in Swinoujscie has been built and is being expanded, it is planned to build a terminal near Gdansk, gas interconnectors with Lithuania and Slovakia, the Polish-Danish-Norwegian gas pipeline BalticPipe.”
Medvedev noted that Poland considers the events in Ukraine, where Russia is conducting a special operation to demilitarize and de-Nazify the country, as an excellent reason to freeze any initiatives related to Russia, support "the regime of anti-Russian sanctions and whipping up of a new cold war."
“Polish propaganda is accustomed to pinning all problems on Russia, in this sense it is similar to that of the Baltics and Ukraine,” he remarked.
Warsaw, said Medvedev, has been eyeing the territory of Ukraine, using anti-Russian rhetoric to mask its true intentions.
"On Polish television, without a twinge of conscience, they have displayed a map of the partition of Ukraine… Its clear that this cannot be done legally. But Warsaw has a long-tried method of justifying its unseemly actions by skillfully using anti-Russian rhetoric," said Medvedev.
Earlier, a partition map of Ukraine had been displayed on the air of the Polish TV channel TVP1, showing Lvov, Ivano-Frankovsk, Volyn, Rovno and Ternopol regions of Ukraine as part of Poland.
Medvedev’s statements come as on Saturday, Russian Ambassador to Poland Sergei Andreev suggested Russia might be forced to temporarily close its embassy in Warsaw.
"It won’t likely come to a diplomatic breakdown. We may be forced to close our embassy here for a while. Of course, the Poles would have to close theirs in Moscow," he told the Solovyov Live show.
The move is considered after Warsaw earlier announced it was expelling 45 Russian diplomats suspected of spying, in an allegation Andreev dismissed as "nebulous."
Poland’s moves have followed in the footsteps of Washington and its NATO allies, which have been drumming up support for the Kiev authorities, pumping the country with weapons, while slapping Russia with sweeping sanctions over its actions in the neighboring country.
On 24 February, Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine after the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk appealed for help in defending themselves against Kiev aggression. The Russian defence ministry said the operation is only targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure. Earlier in February, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed decrees recognising the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics. The new treaties oblige Moscow with ensuring the security of the two Russian-speaking republics.