The Western Mainstream Media falsely claimed for years that post-Maidan Ukraine is a paradise of ethno-religious harmony, alleging that it’s only so-called “Russian propaganda” which portrays it differently. The Kremlin warned from the very beginning that this diverse country was sliding towards fascism after radical ideologues captured control of it with the support of foreign intelligence services. These concerns were dishonestly dismissed as “hybrid warfare” supposedly intended to reduce confidence in Ukraine’s new leadership yet a new Polish parliamentary report proves that Russia was right about post-Maidan Ukraine’s fascism all along.

Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Szymon Szynkowski vel Sęk shared a report last Thursday about the situation of Poles in Ukraine with the Committee on Liaison with Poles Abroad. Before proceeding, the reader should remember that Poland is among the West’s top supporters of Ukraine’s post-Maidan government and has made a point of opposing practically everything that Russia says or does out of principle. The Central & Eastern European (CEE) leader can’t by any stretch of the imagination be accused of “pushing Russian propaganda” which is why it’s so significant that the Deputy Foreign Minister’s report vindicated Moscow’s claims over the years.

According to the Remix online outlet specializing in news from the Visegrad countries (Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia), Szynkowski vel Sęk “emphasized that the situation of many Poles in Ukraine is changing for the worse due to both objective and subjective factors.” The former were chalked up to socio-economic circumstances and related consequences stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic while the latter perfectly aligned with the Kremlin’s warnings. According to the Deputy Foreign Minister, the Ukrainian parliament’s language bill is detrimental to Poles, people associated with the genocide of Poles from 1943-44 are being glorified, the exhumation of Polish victims has been suspended, and there are religious tensions.

Remix quoted him as concluding that “It would not be an overstatement to say that Poles in Ukraine are being discriminated against in terms of freedom of belief, access to learning their mother tongue, and freedom of speech.” All of this was foreseeable and therefore preventable ahead of time had Ukraine’s Western patrons like Poland cared enough about Russia’s realistic warnings to preemptively avert this situation by putting pressure on that country’s post-Maidan leadership to reverse its ethno-fascist policies. Instead, those same patrons mistakenly thought that they could weaponize such ideological trends against Ukraine’s prominent Russian minority, carelessly ignoring the risk that this would inevitably pose to Poles and others.

This long-overdue awakening shouldn’t be interpreted as a signal that Poland’s approach to Ukraine will significantly change, however, since Warsaw still intends to treat Kiev as its junior partner in the “Three Seas Initiative” (3SI) that the CEE leader is steadily assembling across the region. Despite unintentionally vindicating its Russian rival and therefore by default proving that those who questioned the Kremlin’s claims all these years were wrong, Poland has no interest in improving relations with Moscow even though this would be the most pragmatic course of action. It’ll be difficult for Poland to defend itself from the ongoing joint US-German Hybrid War while waging its own Hybrid Wars on Belarus and Russia.

This prediction speaks to the counterproductive stubbornness of contemporary Polish foreign policy whereby the country will continue provoking Russia out of principle despite this distracting from its ability to defend itself from more pressing threats coming from its nominal Western “allies”. The lack of pragmatism as influenced by the country’s ideologically driven (politically Russophobic) policies is jeopardizing Polish interests within its “sphere of influence” in Ukraine as proven by the latest parliamentary report about the dire situation facing its fellow Poles there and is worsening its domestic security situation by pretending that Russia poses more of a threat than the US-German condominium. Poland will remain imperiled without a course correction.