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Donald Trump risks making a “historical mistake” if his negotiations to end the war in Ukraine result in the US recognising Russia’s claims to Crimea and other occupied territory, says the Polish government’s adviser on Ukraine.
Paweł Kowal, who advises Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Ukraine and heads the Polish parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said in an interview that a “red line” would be crossed for Poland and the rest of central Europe if expanded Russian borders were legally recognised as a result of the invasion of a neighbouring country.
Kowal was speaking before flying to Washington on Sunday to meet senior members of the US Congress and Keith Kellogg, President Trump’s special envoy on Ukraine.
There was a clear difference, Kowal said, between “provisional solutions” to end the fighting in Ukraine and the fulfilment of “Russian expectations to recognise Crimea, Donbas or other parts of Ukraine, which would be a historical mistake”. In terms of the precedent this would set enabling Putin to expand “imperial Russia”, Kowal warned, “it would be horrible”.
In 2022 Poland was among Nato countries that spearheaded military help to Ukraine following Moscow’s full-scale invasion, and it also became the EU’s main gateway for Ukrainian refugees.
Since January, however, Warsaw has watched anxiously as Trump has lambasted his Nato allies, criticised Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In 1939 Poland was partitioned by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and was then among the European countries that fell under Soviet control following the 1945 Yalta agreement that reconfigured the continent at the end of the second world war.
While Trump has excluded European leaders from his recent negotiations with Moscow and Kyiv, Kowal argued that “it’s very difficult to discuss security in Ukraine in isolation from the general security issue of central Europe”.
He added: “Russia, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, recognised Ukraine with their borders, also including Crimea and Donbas, and that’s the basis of the rules of international law. The international legal guarantees for borders in central Europe are also some of the main guarantees to keep peace in that region, according to our historical experience.”
Still, Kowal said he was confident Trump would ultimately not allow Russia to control Ukrainian territory de jure and would instead recognise the continued threat presented by Putin. He argued Trump would also not risk depriving US companies of the opportunity to invest in Ukraine’s post-conflict reconstruction by withholding the strong security guarantees that Kyiv and its European allies want.
“For the politicians, it’s very easy to separate political guarantees from business guarantees and from military guarantees, but if real [corporate] money is to invest in Ukraine, they will ask for serious American guarantees,” he said.
European leaders have recently held several meetings to discuss how to re-arm the continent, as well as to create a “coalition of the willing” to secure Ukraine following any truce brokered by Trump.
Kowal questioned the focus on post-conflict coalition arrangements rather than on helping Ukraine “save its territory right now”, given that Putin is continuing his military offensive and appears content to let Trump’s negotiations drag on.
“My opinion is that we have a little bit of a false perspective on that coalition, because what is crucial is to stop the Russians right now,” he said. “We should be concentrating on [immediate] tactical support to Ukraine, because I see how Putin could use the time of the negotiations with the US.”
Tusk has said Warsaw will continue to provide logistical support to Ukraine but will not deploy Polish soldiers in the country as part of an international peacekeeping mission.
Kowal said this stance responded to the need not to weaken a Polish military whose main role is to protect the country’s own borders against Russia and its proxy Belarus, after Poland already made an outsized military equipment contribution to boost Ukraine’s army in 2022.
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