Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now a senior Kremlin security adviser, has in a highly explosive social media post attacked Poland for its support of Ukraine, reigniting and escalating decades-long tensions between Moscow and Warsaw.
Poland’s surprisingly temperamental defense of Ukraine would prove “expensive and pointless,” Medvedev predicted, adding menacingly that he was confident Warsaw would “make the right choice” and embrace Russia again.
Medvedev is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and served four years as deputy president when Putin faced term limits. Medvedev later served as Putin’s prime minister and is now deputy chairman of the Kremlin’s Security Council. President is Putin.
In a Monday post on the social network Telegram, Medvedev lamented that “the interests of Polish citizens have been sacrificed to Russophobia” by “untalented politicians and their puppeteers” in the United States. He branded Polish leaders – two of whom, Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Mateusz Morawiecki, traveled with other Eastern European leaders to besieged Kyiv last week to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – “political imbeciles” for “vulgar” propaganda about Russia spread.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shakes hands with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki during a news conference with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa and Polish Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Kyiv March 15. (Ukrainian Presidential Election Press Service/Handout via Reuters)
Most observers see the propaganda coming primarily from the tightly controlled Russian media, which has mostly portrayed the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine as a justified limited-scale operation.
Inna Sovsun, Member of the Ukrainian Parliament and leader of the liberal party Holos (“Voice”), branded Medvedev’s thoughts “psychotic” on Twitter, adding that the “rhetoric is so similar to what we heard about Ukraine in the months leading up to last month’s invasion that shook the order in post-Cold War Eastern Europe.”
“This is a direct attack on Poland,” wrote Sovsun.
Medvedev’s anger appears to stem from the Kremlin’s disappointment with Warsaw, where a socially conservative, nationalist government may have been viewed as sympathetic to Putin when he launched the invasion of Ukraine. Like so much else about the war, this appears to be a serious miscalculation on Moscow’s part.
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Poland has taken in more than 2 million Ukrainian refugees, a show of solidarity that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Not only that, the country’s suddenly emboldened leaders have proposed deploying warplanes to Ukraine – a proposal that surprised US diplomats and military leaders – and establishing an international peacekeeping force to fight back the stalled Russian invasion. Perhaps most worrying for Moscow, Poland has become a key hub for the transfer of military supplies to Ukraine, including powerful anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons that have so far thwarted the Russian attack.
Refugees from Ukraine wait for Polish national identification numbers in front of the National Stadium in Warsaw March 19. (Maciek Jazwiecki/Agencja Wyborcza.pl via Reuters)
“I never thought we had that in us,” a Polish student told The New York Times of these developments. “No one knew we could be mobilized like that.”
The same developments angered a Kremlin that finds few allies in its alleged attempt to “denazify” Ukraine, whose president is Jewish and whose family perished in the Holocaust. On the contrary, nations that have rebelled against Russian influence see little reason to help an effort that may turn against them in the future.
Still, Putin has made it clear that he believes Russia needs to re-establish itself as a regional superpower. Last year he published a 5,000-word article titled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” which portrayed Ukraine as an artificial construct due to its long history with Russia. He could arguably apply the same revisionist logic to justify the conquest of other Slavic nations of the ex-Soviet bloc – like Poland – even at the cost of sparking a broader European conflict.
Nevertheless, Poland’s defiance has visibly tormented the elites in the Kremlin. “Sooner or later they will understand that hatred of Russia does not strengthen society, does not contribute to prosperity and peace,” Medvedev wrote in his bitter Telegram post, one of his first in a network widespread in Russia and Ukraine.
Much like Putin during the war with Ukraine, Medvedev engaged in the revisionist history that made Russia both a hero and a victim. He noted that it was the Red Army that drove Adolf Hitler out of Poland, but ignored the fact that Hitler and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had agreed to divide Poland before the Nazi invasion. In 1940, Soviet security services murdered more than 20,000 Polish officers and intellectuals in what later became known as the Katyn massacre.
corpses in a mass grave. The Katyn massacre of 1940 was perpetrated by the USSR political police on thousands of Poles in Russia. (Kok-Lochon/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
Later, after World War II, Poland suffered decades of oppression under Soviet rule. As in Ukraine, the lack of geographical distance made the exercise of autonomy almost impossible, although the solidarity movement of the 1980s proved to be one of the strongest anti-authoritarian forces challenging the Kremlin.
Ukraine experienced similar devastation at the hands of Russia both before and after World War II. But in its recent attempts to regain influence in Eastern Europe, the Kremlin has launched a campaign of falsehoods and complaints reminiscent of Soviet propaganda in its exaggerated inaccuracies.
“History is now being redrawn, monuments are being destroyed,” Medvedev lamented on Telegram.
Poland borders Ukraine but, unlike Ukraine, is a member of NATO. If Putin were to attack Poland, NATO’s collective defense clause would require a military response from much of Europe and the United States. Given how badly the Ukrainian invasion went for Russia, such an attack doesn’t seem likely – but the Kremlin’s roar is nonetheless disturbing.
Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, at a video conference on March 16. (Yekaterina Shtukina, Sputnik, Government Pool Photo via AP)
“We should take this seriously,” says the Ukraine expert Alina Polyakova, Head of the Center for European Policy Analysissaid Medvedev’s provocative post.
President Biden, who has promised to defend himself “every inch” of NATO territory with the US military, will visit Poland on Friday after meeting European leaders in Brussels.
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How can Ukrainian forces take out so many Russian tanks? Use this embed to learn more about some of the weapon systems that the US is sending to the Ukrainian army.
