Jacek Saryusz-Wolski: Minsk agreement “died”. We need to help Ukraine with weapons

Russia's war against Ukraine is one of the key topics at the Wroclaw Global Forum.

The Forum started in Poland on June 11. The event was opened by Polish president Bronislaw Komorowski.

“Amid various kinds of crises and numerous challenges, such as Ukraine-Russia, the European crisis, integration problems of the western world, we must say that building and supporting solidarity is a vital task,” Radio Svaboda quotes Komorowski, at whose initiative a NATO summit will be held in Warsaw next year, as saying in the opening speech.

Komorowski noted that it was a symbolic idea to gather NATO leaders in the building where the Warsaw Pact had been signed at the initiative of the Soviet Union many years ago as a response to the expansion of the North Atlantic Alliance.

The Polish president said he expected the NATO summit in Warsaw to create a sort of the guard – a ready-to-act system in close proximity to a potential danger.

Polish foreign minister Grzegorz Schetyna said Poland would bring the army in line with NATO standards and increase military spendings by 2% of GDP.

“We hope other countries will do the same,” Schetyna stressed. “We will be more effective if we understand what we can expect.”

Schetyna noted that it was important to support Ukraine in conditions of Russia's aggression:

“Ukraine deserves a better future. It needs our solidarity. I wait for the day when Ukraine will join the EU as a full-fledged member.”

The Polish foreign minister noted that Poland didn't seek a conflict with Russia:

“We expect normal relations with Russia on the basis of international norms to be resumed.”

Poland's defence minister Tomasz Siemoniak thinks the current conflict in Russia is a long-term crisis rather than an incident, and it requires NATO members to adapt to new challenges:

“We need a new policy without illusions towards Russia. It used to be based on calculations. <...> The situation requires active support of our eastern partners – Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia. We need modernised armed forces.”

“The Minsk agreement has died. We should consider weapons supplies to the Ukrainian army,” MEP and deputy chairman of the Christian Democrats group Jacek Saryusz-Wolski said at the Wroclaw Forum.

“We mustn't allow Putin to play cat and mouse with us. We must build our relations so that we could assess his actions, and not the reverse. We must be prepared for different scenarios, also in a military sense. We have to admit that the Minsk agreement has died,” the politician said.

Jacek Saryusz-Wolski said the issue of supplying weapons to the Ukrainian army should be discussed:

“We should invest in something what we were doing in Belarus. Let's not forget that other Russia exists. The Russia of Politkovskaya, Sakharov, Nemtsov, Kovalyov and Memorial.”

The Wroclaw Global Forum is an annual event focusing on transatlantic economic cooperation and political ties between the European Union and the United States. Panel discussions during the forum attract hundreds of politicians, diplomats, experts and businessmen from Poland, other EU countries and the US.

A number of discussions about Russia's actions in eastern Ukraine, the future of the Eastern Partnership, progress and problems of transatlantic partnership in trade and investments are planned this year. The Global Forum will end on Saturday.