Statement of the President of the Polish American Congress on the crisis at Poland’s border with Belarus.
Poland and America are partners in liberty. The democratic revolutions of the late 18th century, which challenged authoritarian rule in nearly every country of the Atlantic world, succeeded in America. The democratic revolution prevailed in America because the British and their allies were decisively defeated by General Washington’s army, in which Generals Pułaski and Kościuszko served with great distinction. In Poland, the democratic revolution was crushed by the combined forces of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, and those three powers partitioned Poland and erased it from the map of Europe. These authoritarian states feared that Poland’s democratic revolution would encourage their own subjects to rebel and demand the same rights as the Poles, and so they destroyed Poland. At the end of World War I, the simultaneous defeat of all three empires that had partitioned the Commonwealth for 123 years gave Poles the opportunity to restore the Polish state on November 11, 1918. The fathers of independence — Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Roman Dmowski, Józef Piłsudski, Wincenty Witos, Wojciech Korfanty, and Ignacy Daszyński — contributed to Poland regaining its freedom.
On Poland’s Independence Day, the Polish American Congress calls on the United States government to give its full support to the government and people of Poland in their refusal to submit to intimidation by the Kremlin and to the escalation of the refugee situation on Poland’s border with Belarus. Kremlin decision-makers are encouraging ever more refugees from the Middle East to gather at the border and demand passage into Poland. This is causing growing tension on the border with Poland, and with the European Union as a whole.
On November 9, 2021, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki stated that the Kremlin is ruthlessly exploiting the refugee situation to destabilize Poland and the European Union.
The Polish American Congress, representing more than 10 million Americans of Polish descent and others who value strong bilateral relations between America and Poland, fully supports Prime Minister Morawiecki’s statement: the Kremlin is using the refugee situation to destabilize NATO and European Union member states, turn them against one another, and thereby increase Moscow’s influence in Europe.
Yesterday, November 10, Russian Air Force patrols carried out maneuvers along Poland’s border with Belarus to intimidate Poland and the Polish people. These strategies are nothing new; Russia has used such tactics since the early 18th century.
For this reason, the United States and Poland’s other NATO allies must support the resistance of Poland and its people against pressure from the Kremlin. The massing of Russian troops on Ukraine’s borders, the Kremlin’s efforts to push through Nord Stream 2 in order to undermine the Three Seas Initiative, and Moscow’s orchestration of the refugee situation on the Polish–Belarusian border are all elements of Putin’s plan to divide NATO and European Union states and provoke them into acting against one another.