On December 15, President of Poland Andrzej Duda visited Ukraine for the first time since his election in May 2015. Many experts asked questions about causes for delaying this visit of the leader of a neighboring state, who visited many European countries in the interim. And by the way, a few new questions arose after the statement made by Secretary of State for Foreign Policy in the Office of the President of Poland Krzysztof Szczerski, who explained that the main purpose of the visit was “to reset vectors of Polish-Ukrainian cooperation.” The secretary also stressed the need to move from a relationship of declaratory nature, which the strategic partnership of Poland and Ukraine had been until now in his view, to a partnership of specific actions.
In fact, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko and Duda did not mention setting vectors at their joint press conference. The parties rather discussed strengthening cooperation in all areas and continuing the historical dialog. As expected, Duda stressed the need to implement the Minsk Agreements, return control of the Ukrainian-Russian border to Ukraine, and support Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity. Still, one of his statements was rather unexpected. Duda told reporters that he would like very much to see Ukraine attending the NATO summit in Poland. And besides, the Polish president said that his country was clearly in favor of extending the sanctions imposed on Russia.
The Day turned to Ukrainian and Polish experts for comments on the visit of the Polish president.
“IT WOULD BE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE TO BRING HISTORICAL ISSUES BACK TO THE POLITICAL ARENA”
Volodymyr OHRYZKO, former Foreign Minister of Ukraine, Kyiv:
“I think that delaying Duda’s first official visit to Ukraine was deliberate. In particular, they did so due to the need to wait for the parliamentary election held in October. And now, with one party holding all leadership positions, they can truly speak with one voice. So, I think Duda actually is not too late, because what we see being discussed is extremely important and useful to both parties. Also, there were contacts between the presidents before, just not in the form of an official visit.
“Now to Duda’s statement that he would like to see Ukraine sitting at the table at the NATO summit to be held next year in Warsaw. This is the right approach, because we, both Ukraine and NATO member nations, need today to rethink the security architecture which took shape after the Russian aggression. We now have to think about other approaches to establishing the security zone, which is a responsibility of NATO and the few countries that ought to join it in the future. Thus, the dialog should include the interests of those countries, when they will speak about Ukraine, Georgia, and possibly Moldova too.
“Regarding Russia, meanwhile, both NATO and Ukraine should start a policy of exclusion, in other words deterrence, otherwise we will have no hope for a secure world in the future.
“Regarding the Polish representative’s statement on the need to fill the declaratory strategic partnership with specific actions, I would say that every government tries to say that the history starts with them. I think this is not true. Over the years, our two nations have done a lot, and these steps have been not declarative in nature, but very practical. What we need to do now is to fill well-developed forms with, indeed, really specific content, and we already have enough tools to make bilateral relations as effective as possible. It would be counterproductive, however, to bring historical issues back to the political arena. Some political circles are starting to play up this topic, and if this happens, it will be harmful, because history should be left to historians, and politicians should look to the future and realize that it is not possible to build the future relying on the past only, and, moreover, on individual episodes of that past.
“Thanks to the actions of previous governments in Ukraine and Poland, we have now a very dense network of interactions between agencies that are responsible for specific areas of cooperation. This is very important because our interests are, in fact, intertwined in political, economic, security, cultural, and all other possible areas.
“So, I would just express my desire for us and the Poles, and through them the EU and NATO in their entirety, to identify as a priority the policy of mutual enrichment through continuing and strengthening existing contacts. For the more of these threads will link Ukraine with each member of the EU and NATO as well with these structures as a whole, the faster we will integrate into these two extremely important to us economic and military-political structures.”
“SOME ISSUES HAVE TO DO WITH REFORMS IN UKRAINE, AND SOME OTHERS WITH THE EU’S POLICIES”
Andrzej SZEPTYCKI, analyst, Institute of International Relations, University of Warsaw:
“It is good that this visit took place. I regret that it happened only now. But we had a different political schedule, and Duda was previously focused on the parliamentary election in Poland.
“During the negotiations, some specific proposals were tabled, including the revival of the Poland-Ukraine Presidential Committee and furthering energy cooperation. Overall, we have had some projects and proposals on cooperation for many years, but it has not always been possible to implement them. So, the main question is whether we will be able to implement ambitious Polish-Ukrainian projects. Here, some issues have to do with reforms in Ukraine, and some others with the EU’s policies.”
