Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who nowadays serves as the Deputy Chairman of the National Security Council, published the truth about Poland in his latest Telegram post that can be read in Russian here. It was written in response to Warsaw declaring that it’ll seek the so-called “de-Russification” of its own economy then all of Europe’s prior to “de-Russifying” everything else about the EU. I analyzed the purely self-serving reasons behind this policy in my piece about it yesterday so the present one won’t repeat that insight but will focus on former President Medvedev’s latest post.

The gist of the Deputy Chairman of the National Security Council’s message is that Poland’s policies are counterproductive for both itself and its EU partners. Medvedev described its leadership, particularly Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Deputy Prime Minister (and grey cardinal) Jarosław Kaczyński, as pathological Russophobes whose strings are pulled by their transatlantic patrons in America. By clinging to what Russia regards as the Time of Troubles from nearly half a millennia ago when their former Commonwealth was expelled from Moscow, they’re blinded from seeing the present or future.

That’s why, he believes, they’re doing all they can to ruin everyone else’s relations with Russia too. Medvedev assesses that they simply can’t forgive Russia for ruining their dreams of a regional empire, which he concluded ended up failing in any case not because of his own country but due to the former Commonwealth’s “internal squabbles, corruption, economic failures, and lost battles.” Blaming Russia, however, is a convenient scapegoat for supposedly rallying the nation behind their elites though Medvedev is certain that this policy is bound to fail since it isn’t in the interests of the Polish people.

He’s also disgusted that Poland’s uniquely vicious brand of Russophobia takes the form of demolishing monuments to the same Red Army that liberated the Polish people from the Nazis’ genocidal yoke and put an end to the Holocaust that killed several million of their own Jewish citizens. In addition, the former president finds it completely repulsive that Poland nowadays openly equates its occupation by genocidal Nazi Germany with its decades-long post-war status as a Soviet ally. Nevertheless, in spite of these unprecedentedly unfriendly steps by the Polish leadership, Polonophobia is non-existent in Russia.

I can attest to this from my personal experience as an American-Pole with Ukrainian ancestry who’s been living in Moscow for the past 8,5 years. Whenever I mention my Polish ethnicity in response to those Russians who ask me about my background given my obvious accent, they always react positively. Some have even proceeded to share their own Polish roots with me, and most of those who’ve done so explain that their grandparents came from the western regions of Belarus and/or Ukraine that were under Warsaw’s control during the interwar Second Polish Republic and known as the “Kresy”.

There’s never even been a hint of resentment that their Polish family members eventually ended up in what is nowadays Russia. To the contrary, they’ve very proud to be Russian-Poles, and many have even traveled to Poland before. Those that have always tell me how much they enjoyed the country, whether it was during the communist times or afterwards. These Russians differentiate between the Russophobic Polish leadership and the fraternal Polish people with whom they share many socio-cultural similarities that are nowadays unfortunately taboo to discuss in Polish society given the political climate.

It’s from these first-hand experiences as a Moscow-based American-Pole with Ukrainian ancestry who also lived in Poland for a year prior to moving to Russia in summer 2013 that I share Medvedev’s optimistic prediction that these two people will hopefully overcome their artificially manufactured and US-provoked political problems to return to their fraternal relations sometime in the future. As the former Russian president rightly noted, “human ties are indispensable, and cultural and scientific exchange between the birthplaces of Pushkin and Mickiewicz, Tchaikovsky and Chopin, Lomonosov and Copernicus is vital.”

Everything that Medvedev wrote in his latest Telegram post is true. Poland’s conservative-nationalist leadership, which I mostly support on all domestic issues apart from its unacceptable Russophobia, is indeed being manipulated as an American proxy for dividing and ruling Europe in the New Cold War. It truly pains me to see the damage that they’ve done to bilateral relations for no reason at all and purely in pursuit of self-interested reasons related to their elite’s dreams of post-modern neo-imperial prestige in the region like I explained in my analysis that was hyperlinked to in the first sentence of this analysis.

Everyone’s entitled to their own views about Russia’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine, but political differences mustn’t be exploited to further divide fraternal people. Russians and Poles have plenty of socio-cultural similarities that explain why the former harbor no Polonophobia against the latter whatsoever in spite of their presently Russophobic leadership. It’s a pity that the Polish state has been turned into one of the US’ Hybrid War weapons against Russia, but hopefully it won’t inflict any more damage to Russian-European relations than it already has.