WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Wanda Kwiatkowska eagerly read the reports of the U.S. presidential debate Wednesday morning. They convinced her that a second Trump presidency would pose a serious threat to her home country of Poland and the wider region.
Former President Donald Trump twice refused to directly answer a question during the debate about whether he wanted U.S. ally Ukraine to win the war. Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris praised U.S. and NATO support for Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion so far — and called for it to continue.
“Otherwise, (Russian President Vladimir) Putin would be sitting in Kiev with his eyes on the rest of Europe. Starting with Poland,” she said.
That’s an argument many in Poland itself are making, and it resonated Wednesday in the country of 38 million people whose geography makes it particularly sensitive to the debate. The NATO member is sandwiched between European Union partners to the west and, to the east, Russia’s Kaliningrad region, Russian ally Belarus and Ukraine.
As a result, war is always present in Poland, whether in the form of occasional incursions into Polish airspace or in the large numbers of refugees who have settled there.
Fears that Putin could triumph in Ukraine and then turn his attention to areas of Central Europe once controlled by Moscow, including the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, have been simmering ever since Russia first illegally annexed Crimea in 2014. Fears have been heightened following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, especially when Russia had the momentum on the battlefield.
If Ukraine loses, Putin will “take further steps,” said Kwiatkowska, a 75-year-old Warsaw resident whose Ukrainian mother and Polish father met after World War II.
She was particularly dismissive of Trump’s claim in Tuesday night’s debate that he could easily end the war. “I’ll take care of it before I even become president,” Trump said.
“Just empty words,” she mocked as she pulled a shopping cart while doing her morning grocery shopping in Warsaw, a capital that, like cities in Ukraine today, was almost completely bombed during World War II.
Sławomir Dębski, professor of strategy and international relations at the College of Europe in Natolin, also called it “far-fetched” for Trump to claim he could force Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the negotiating table before he even entered the White House.
“There is little reason to believe that Putin would agree to such a meeting unless Ukraine is ready to capitulate, which would be unlikely,” Dębski said. In fact, Putin insisted earlier this year that Ukraine must give up vast amounts of territory and not join NATO only as a condition for starting negotiations.
Dębski argued that it was a “clear mistake” for Trump not to say outright that he wants Ukraine to win the war. But he also argued that the Biden administration made a mistake because it “committed itself to helping Ukraine as long as it took, but refused to say that this would mean Ukraine’s victory.”
When Trump first won the presidency, there was great enthusiasm for him in Poland, both in government and among the public. The conservative authorities in power at the time shared many of his views, particularly their opposition to migration. Poland, one of the biggest defense spenders among NATO allies, also welcomed his push for other allies to spend more on defense themselves.
The current government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk has made its critical views of Trump known. And with the brutal war in Ukraine, many Poles have become sour on Trump, who has a history of admiring remarks about Putin.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the back-and-forth, saying that “Putin’s name is being used, let’s say, as one of the instruments in the domestic political struggle of the United States.”
Dębski noted that Trump’s praise for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who is reportedly Putin’s closest ally within the European Union and NATO, is also unlikely to go down well with many Poles.
Trump called Orbán “a tough, smart man.”
Andrzej Nowak, a 67-year-old resident of Warsaw, said he sees Putin as a danger to the region. According to him, if Russia wins in Ukraine, Poland could one day face Russian troops on its border.
“It is important for Poland that Ukraine wins,” Nowak said. “Because there is no telling what this lunatic will come up with.”
