As of: February 25, 2024, 5:20 a.m
By: Karsten Hinzmann
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NATO is strengthening its presence in Poland with a situation center;
Reason enough for Moscow to threaten the West with total destruction.
Once again.
Moscow – “The time of loudmouths in politics is coming to an end,” the
Süddeutsche Zeitung
is said to have written on March 5th 30 years ago;
Using this example sentence, the
Digital Dictionary of the German Language
explains a person “who talks big but doesn’t act on them” as an “important”.
The world is now hoping once again that Vladimir Solovyov has been thoroughly described as “mouthy” so that there is still a grain of truth behind his public speeches.
Solovyov claims that while Russia has “pity” for its “brothers” in Ukraine, Moscow will show no compunction about wiping out Polish cities “immediately” – as
Newsweek
quotes him right now .
Solovyov has been the host of the talk show “Sunday Evening with Vladimir Solovyov” on state television for around ten years
Russia and has been considered since the beginning of the Ukraine war alongside the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Medvedev,
as a megaphone for Vladimir Putin's imperialist policies.
According
to
a
clip
on
“To destroy Europe’s face.”
Russia's rhetoric also rags against Foreign Minister Baerbock
Anton Gerashchenko is an official advisor and former deputy minister of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry - an assassination attempt on him was prevented in 2017, which is said to have been controlled from the Kremlin.
Gerashchenko repeatedly draws attention to Solovyov's public appearances on his social media channel.
Also in November, when Solovyov insulted German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Alliance 90/The Greens) and also threatened Germany with subjugation, as
Newsweek
quoted him: “In a loud voice, Solovyov said: 'Annalena Baerbock, you will see how because of your corrupt Stupidity, Berlin will burn and a victory banner will hang over the Reichstag!'”
Solovyov has earned a reputation for making exaggerated statements in public since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
He has claimed more than once that NATO countries were preparing for an attack and predicted that Moscow should launch nuclear attacks against countries that support Ukraine.
Putin's propaganda guillotine: the Russian presenter Vladimir Solovyov: He threatens Poland with cremation.
He has also ranted against Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.
(Archive photo) © Peter Kovalev/Imago
Russia's invasion with the start of the Ukraine war in 2022 was actually a shock for Poland;
but according to observers it was an expected one.
For 30 years, Warsaw's Ostpolitik has been preparing for and trying to deter possible territorial aggression from Moscow.
Poland is afraid, as the journalist Janusz A. Majcherek writes in the German-Polish magazine
Dialog
: The Polish attitude towards Russia and the Russians was formed as a result of recent history, which, in his opinion, was a constant, aggressive expansion of Russia at the expense of Poland.
Russia's great power fantasies have threatened Poland for centuries
The fact that Russia annexed a large part of Ukraine in the second half of the 17th century is still seen as a warning to Poles today and, based on this, as a guideline for Poland's Eastern policy.
Warsaw does not want to allow Russia to subjugate Ukraine, because this would turn Putin's territory into a major power that threatens Poland.
An independent Ukraine guarantees Poland's independence.
For this reason, Poland today pursues a fundamentally benevolent policy towards Ukraine.
Poland has been a member of NATO for 20 years and is an important partner for the protection of NATO's eastern flank.
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Russia openly threatens to shoot down NATO jets – read “return of particularly aggressive attitude”.
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We have to take into account that Vladimir Putin will one day attack a NATO country.
Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) in the Tagesspiegel
At its special meeting in March 2022, NATO decided to permanently strengthen the troops on the border with Russia.
In the future, four NATO combat units will defend the eastern flank in Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania.
In addition to the units that are already stationed in the Baltic states and Poland, without NATO command structures being allowed to be institutionalized there, in order to further soften Russia.
In April 2022, NATO reported that it was making progress with its efforts to strengthen the eastern flank - the four new multinational battle groups had reached the first level of operational readiness.
NATO and Ukraine are now jointly setting up a center for the analysis of military experiences from the Russian war of aggression, as the
tagesschau
reports.
The unit planned for the central Polish city of Bydgoszcz is intended to make it possible to learn together as efficiently as possible from current war events.
To this end, the Ukrainians could provide information about the tactics, capabilities and weaknesses of the Russian attackers.
According to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, there would also be joint training there.
Reason enough for sharp criticism from various Russian officials who now suddenly feel threatened by NATO command structures.
According to Pravda
, the Duma deputy from the Crimea region, Leonid Babashov, said
that the establishment of a NATO training center for Ukraine in Poland was reminiscent of the policy of Nazi Germany, which at the time also provided funds for the training of Bandera groups.
According to him, NATO only wants to prepare an army of collaborators made up of Ukrainian citizens at the training center in Poland.
Bandera cult: wedge between Russia and Ukraine
Stepan Bandera (1909-1959) is hailed as the ultimate anti-Soviet hero and is one of the most controversial figures in Ukrainian history.
The discussion about Bandera and his legacy is also so difficult because Vladimir Putin describes his attack on Ukraine as a “special operation” to supposedly “denazify” the country;
In doing so, he denigrates the country as a hotbed of anti-Russian right-wing radicals and Nazis.
At the beginning of 1933 he was already leader of the national executive of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in Poland.
During his term in office, the organization murdered several Polish politicians, but also Ukrainians who opposed Ukrainian nationalism or cooperated with the Polish state.
By the 1930s and early 1940s, Ukrainian nationalism had become radicalized and began to resemble Italian fascism more and more.
In exchange with other ethnic movements in Europe, a Ukrainian variant of fascism emerged.
From the mid-1930s onwards, the movement made concrete plans as to how Jews, Poles and Russians should be expelled or murdered in order to establish such a state.
The Stalinist terror that began in the summer of 1944 is also important for understanding the history of violence in western Ukraine and the subsequent Bandera cult in this region.
She murdered over 150,000 people in western Ukraine and deported more than 200,000 into the interior of the Soviet Union.
After his release in September 1944, Bandera supported the Wehrmacht.
After the war he lived in Munich.
After Soviet intelligence murdered him in 1959, the Ukrainian diaspora increasingly began to stylize him as a national hero who had died for Ukraine in the fight against the Soviet Union.
This myth was taken up by both anti-Soviet dissidents and neo-fascists in western Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Sources: Federal Agency for Civic Education / Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Since the Russian attack on Ukraine, Poland has been a NATO frontline state alongside the Baltic countries and Finland and Ukraine's logistical umbilical cord to the West.
In order to fundamentally improve the security of NATO's eastern flank, the Western defense alliance has increased its presence - there are currently more than 11,000 NATO soldiers at eleven locations on Polish soil, 10,000 of whom are Americans;
They will stay there for the time being.
At the same time, the nuclear dimension is also playing an increasingly important role in Poland's rearmament, as the
International Politics
magazine reports: On June 30, 2023, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki confirmed Poland's willingness to station nuclear weapons on Polish territory as part of NATO's nuclear participation.
In this context, Poland had already ordered a total of 32 F-35A fighter jets two years before the start of the war in Ukraine, as the magazine
European Security & Technology
writes: This year and next year, deliveries are scheduled to begin with the first six aircraft, which, however initially remain in the USA so that the Polish pilots can be trained on it.
These aircraft should then be transferred to Poland between 2025 and 2026.
Poland will then receive four to six F-35 aircraft annually until 2030, by which time the entire fleet of Polish F-35 aircraft will be officially handed over and operational.
The federal government also takes into account that an agitator like Vladimir Solovyov is more than just a loudmouth.
She also warns against an expansion of the war in Ukraine.
Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) recently told the
Tagesspiegel
: “We hear threats from the Kremlin almost every day - most recently against our friends in the Baltics.
So we have to take into account that one day Vladimir Putin will even attack a NATO country.”