According to former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, Polish President Karol Nawrotski was looking for a pretext for a high-profile political scandal and he found it. Despite this, the diplomat is convinced that even this conflict can be smoothed over.
Points of attention
- Kuleba suggests alternate diplomatic routes that could have been taken to prevent the conflict from escalating, highlighting the need for strategic thinking in such situations.
- Insights from Kuleba provide a nuanced understanding of the dynamics at play and shed light on the complexity of international relations between Poland and Ukraine.
Kuleba explained Navrotsky's logic
As the diplomat noted, when the Polish president announced the initiative to strip Zelensky of the order, he narrowed his room for maneuver as much as possible.
Since he is a "symbol of masculinity" in Poland, he could no longer back down and show weakness.
The first thing he should have done was not to put forward such an initiative, not to back himself into a corner, but to find, if he wanted to express his disagreement, another way. For example, to demand that Tusk's government recall the Polish ambassador to Ukraine for consultations. In diplomacy, this is an extremely strong gesture. And so he would have backed Tusk into a corner, because if Tusk refused, he would have looked weak.
Dmytro Kuleba
Former head of the Ukrainian MZM
However, the Polish president had no intention of resolving this issue through normal diplomatic channels.
Navrotsky needed a political scandal that would be understandable to an ordinary voter. And what was the ambassador recalled for consultations? A normal, ordinary person simply does not understand this. But the highest order was taken away — this is what a person understands. That's what Navrotsky was looking for, — explained Kuleba.
