Warsaw Siren For Lukashenka

The recent information about the upcoming visit of the new ambassador from Warsaw and Polish Foreign Minister to Minsk promises revival in Polish-Belarusian relations.

Perhaps, it will bring interesting prospects. Few people expected that Warsaw would decide to send the new Head of its Foreign Ministry on a full-fledged visit to Minsk so soon after his appointment. After all, it is difficult to remember when the similar visit to Poland was made by his Belarusian counterpart, which may indicate difficult, to say the least, relations between the neighbors. This was the case during all the years of Lukashenka's rule, who already survived three presidents of Poland. I recall that trying to normalize relations, one of them, Aleksander Kwasniewski, urged to talk more with Lukashenka, to which Lech Kaczynski added: when there is something to talk about.

And the third one, Bronislaw Komorowski, in order to normalize relations, literally forced all the necessary procedures to launch the agreement on small border movement with Belarus. But this problem was also inherited by the current president Andrzej Duda, who could see Lukashenka at the UN General Assembly session in New York. However, the chance for the leaders of the two neighboring states to meet personally was never used. True, it is unknown whether there was at the time a mutual desire to talk. But now, judging by some expectations from the arrival of Polish Foreign Minister, the possibility for such desire to occur cannot be excluded. After all, according to some political analysts and the media, Poland was also among the initiators of the lifting of sanctions against the Belarusian regime, together with Germany and Austria.

It is worth recalling that the Agreement with Poland on Local Border Traffic was ratified by the parliaments, as well as signed by the presidents of both countries back in 2010. However, the Belarusian side never started to implement the Agreement. At first, it was stated that the Agreement did not come into force due to lack of specialized printers to print passing cards. A little later, the Belarusian Foreign Ministry openly stated that the Belarusian side did not start to implement the specific agreement for political reasons -- due to the "anti-Belarusian position" of Poland.

According to some experts, if thousands more of Belarusian citizens had the opportunity of visa-free entry to Poland, Bialystok markets alone would reap large profits. However, this is exactly what the Belarusian authorities do not want. It is obvious that the political dimension of this agreement's launch is no less important than a reference to the need to optimize infrastructure and other technical difficulties. Hardly anyone can doubt that this problem can become one of the topics of the upcoming meeting in Minsk of the heads of the two foreign ministries.

In the meantime, after the EU lifted almost all the sanctions against the official Minsk, there appeared an intense state of optimism about the future relations with the European partners. It must be admitted that thanks to its lawyers and lobbyists, the Belarusian regime managed to impose on Brussels and other European capitals its original vision of "integration of integrations", which somehow resembles in its depth the Brezhnev's directive of "economy must be economical." We must assume that the enthusiasts of dialogue with Lukashenka hope that after the sanctions are removed, the herds of investors will rush to the Belarusian market, where the economy is still economical and the head of state remains the legislator. Whether the Polish small and medium-sized businesses have an understanding of the welfare state basics remains unclear. But the real fruits of development of inter-regional cooperation between Poland and Belarus, apparently, still await better times, when the economy and business conditions in Belarus will be the same as in the neighboring Poland.

With a certain degree of confidence we can say that the seemingly sudden desire of Warsaw to send to Minsk its foreign minister Witold Waszczykowski has another motivation, capable of "cheering up" bilateral relations. It is the problem of the Union of Poles in Belarus that the Belarusian authorities do not recognize.

After the actual destruction of the union, which they consider a hostile "fifth column", a new union was created which is not recognized by Warsaw. It should be noted that in his speech at the opening session of the new Senate of Parliament, the Polish president Andrzej Duda announced his intention to significantly increase support for the Polish diaspora. According to some estimates, outside of Poland live approximately 20 million Poles. Of these, half a million lives in the countries of the former Soviet Union. According to the 2009 census, 294,549 people in Belarus (3% of the population) identified themselves as Poles.

Some experts believe this data is greatly understated. As we know, these citizens of Belarus had limitations and some other difficulties in obtaining "Polish Card", which gives a number of non-civil rights in Poland. Therefore, the statement of President Andrzej Duda should not be viewed simply as a statement of intent. Concern about the Poles living in other countries, including those in neighboring Belarus, will certainly increase. This position is consistent with the ideology of the ruling party "Law and Justice" that is seeking the momentum in the development of the country in the historical heritage and national values. Therefore, Warsaw could not help but paid attention to the unusually clear, in fact, harsh reaction of the Conference of Catholic Bishops in Belarus to the attempt of the Commissioner for Religious Affairs to interfere with the internal affairs of the church. The clerk did nothing less than publicly question the state of the priests' professional level. Among them were many ethnic Poles. It is interesting that such a crude attack on Catholic Church miraculously coincided with the historic meeting of the Pope with the Patriarch in Cuba, which buried Lukashenka's dream to see them together in Belarus. Maybe it was not a coincidence. Who knows? Whether the Belarusian companions of the Polish Minister are able to hear the Warsaw siren should become clear after his visit to Minsk.

At the same time, it seems that the most important topic of the promised meetings at the ministerial level, and possibly higher, will be the topic of security in the regional and European contexts. With the advent of the PiS, policy statements were made at the presidential level and other levels about the revival of the Intermarium. Thus, the statement of the President of Poland Andrzej Duda about the establishment of a partnership bloc of states from the Baltic to the Black Sea was intended to give new impetus to a long-standing debate about the format of cooperation in Eastern Europe.

Some experts were quick to call the statement a remake of Pilsudski's dream of the "sanitary cordon" between Poland and Russia at the expense of NATO states in the east aimed at stopping Russian expansion to the West. It would seem that the current Kremlin policy gives rise to such a comparison. But today, in Warsaw, European realities are seen in a different format -- for the sake of strengthening integration for safety. By strengthening its influence in the Visegrad Group, it seeks for these countries to be "single voice" in Brussels --including using a tool of European security such as NATO.

Once the Intermarium concept also mentioned Ukraine and Belarus, which is now the western border of the so-called Union State of Russia and Belarus. The randomly appearing judgments, the assurances of the Belarusian neutrality, which is different to the Kremlin's policy, cannot be taken seriously. However, the same is true about the reality of full implementation of the "Minsk-2" accords. As it turned out, the progress of their actual implementation is being discussed not only in Minsk, but also in Kaliningrad -- and without any of groups and subgroups.

As for Ukraine, every day Warsaw intensifies its presence there, offering to extend the "Normandy" or the new format of solution to the crisis through the involvement of EU member states bordering on Ukraine. Here it may be recalled that at the end of the 1930s the Polish Foreign Minister Jozef Beck tried to advance the idea of Pilsudski, promoting in diplomatic circles the "Third Europe" -- the union of Poland, Romania and Hungary. Today, the reality of such Europe is reflected in the Visegrad Group and the fact that all these countries are members of NATO, which actually got revived by Putin's policies. Belarusian peace keepers are out of the question here. According to trustworthy opinion polls, after the annexation of Crimea and the war in the east of the country, the pro-NATO sentiment strengthened in Ukraine. Nearly 50 percent of Ukrainians do not see any guarantor of Ukraine's national security other than NATO.

In the meantime, as soon as the Munich Security Conference, which was also attended by the head of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry, was over, there became heard "sirens" from Minsk -- statements about Russian and upgraded Belarusian missile systems with a range of over 200 km. The side they will be targeting is clear. Presumably, it is also clear to the distinguished guest from Warsaw, who at one time worked not only as Deputy Minister of Defense and Deputy Director of the National Security Bureau -- a body reporting to the president of Poland. Thus the demonstrative arrogance and the conspiratorial behavior of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry and others, often seen by their foreign interlocutors, presumably, will not change the views of the Foreign Minister of Poland Witold Waszczykowski that "NATO cannot have two levels of security."

Roman Yakovlevsky political commentator, specially for charter97.org