Russia

Today is the 85th anniversary of the Soviet aggression against Poland. On September 17, 1939, in the early morning hours, the Soviet Union attacked Poland by force of arms. In this way, Stalin fulfilled the August secret agreement with Hitler (the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact).

Failure of the Kursk operation could lead to escalation of the conflict, huge losses in people and equipment, and a dramatic deterioration of the situation on other fronts. This is a big stake and the Ukrainian leadership has put a lot on one scale. We will see if it was right.

Although Russia has officially acknowledged the perpetration of the Katyn massacre, this truth is virtually absent from Russian historiography today. For it does not fit into the myth of the great victory of the war, any more than the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939, the mass deportations, the enslavement of the Baltic republics, or the colossal scale of the Red Army's marauding in the final phase of the Second World War.

The Ukrainian offensive in Kursk Oblast began on August 6, 2024, and was a surprising step for both the Russians and Ukraine's allies. It was the largest operation conducted by the Ukrainian armed forces on Russian territory since the beginning of the war.

Today, Poland is a key country on NATO’s eastern flank, a defender of the EU’s eastern borders and a haven for hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who have fled Russian aggression.

He was supposed to be a military man, but the uniform was not his calling. He discovered and introduced to the world some 60 unknown species of flora and fauna. Georgians owe him a unique national park and remember that he was responsible for the creation of what was then Russia's first nature reserve. In Poland, however, Ludwik Młokosiewicz remains completely unknown.

We now move to the 20th century and examine the efforts of Roman Dmowski and Marshall Jozef Pilsudski as they attempt to establish an independent Poland while maintaining pragmatic relations with Russia.

In this scholarly work, "Poland and Russia: The Neighborhood of Freedom and Despotism in the X-XXI Centuries," Professor Andrzej Nowak reviews the history of Poland through the lens of its relations with Russia and presents the ideological beliefs Russia employed throughout its history to achieve its foreign policy objectives through interactions with Poland and the region’s Central and Eastern European states.

The NATO summit, held in Washington from July 9-11, occurred amid the alliance’s 75th anniversary and significant geopolitical tensions. The outcomes were mixed, particularly regarding critical issues like Ukraine’s potential membership.

Understanding this historic and unwavering Russian expansionist commitment should help us formulate a winning strategy for stopping them in Ukraine today, the strategy that is missing in our debates. Believing that we can appease Russians with anything is a mistake. They consider any appeasement a sign of weakness, and it motivates them to continue their conquest.

In the spring of 1940, the Soviets killed the flower of the Polish intelligentsia without a judicial verdict. Today, the Russian authorities would like to see this crime as a common crime that is subject to a statute of limitations.