My blog

I am the last person who would like to praise Kaczyński for something, but I think it is good that he dared to go to Ukraine and personally support Zelensky. Such symbolic gestures are absolutely necessary and have a deep meaning.

I do not want to speculate on Kaczyński's true intentions behind his visit, although I am certain that they were vile, and the fact that he dared to go to a country ravaged by war does not change my assessment of him in relation to what he has done to Poland with his hatred over the last seven years.

However, the call that Kaczyński addressed to NATO from Kiev regarding the launch of a peace mission in Ukraine must be clearly called by its name: it was idiotic.

And not because we cannot call on NATO to get involved in this war, which I myself am a passionate supporter of. Only because Poland is a NATO member and calls to NATO are calls to itself. NATO's involvement must be discussed with other members of the alliance, and the forum for this is the alliance summits and informal meetings with its leaders. Otherwise, these are just empty words calculated for electoral applause. But Kaczyński and Morawiecki are incapable of conducting serious talks, and on top of that, no one serious wants to talk to them.

The war has been going on for three weeks now.

Putin will not win this war because he is too weak. At the same time, however, he is too strong to be defeated by the Ukrainians, with all their courage and hundreds of pieces of weapons supplied by the West.

Putin will never take Kiev and will never break the Ukrainians, no matter how many bombs he drops on Ukrainian cities, how many children die under the rubble and how many Ukrainian women are raped by the Russian scum.

This war will last for years. The West will watch it from the sidelines, naively hoping that sanctions will finish off the satrap and giving Poland and other countries bordering Russia the illusion of a sense of security. Russian troops will occupy one third of Ukraine's territory and constantly bomb the rest. Besides, Putin's war with Ukraine has been going on for eight years, only we have been pretending not to see it all these years.

There are only three possible ways to end this war. The first is for Putin to die. It will happen someday. The second is for Putin to be removed from power by his entourage. Unlikely. The third is for Putin to be removed from power by the Russian people as a result of mass protests. Very unlikely.

Our eastern border has already been crossed by two million Ukrainians fleeing the war.

Mothers with children who show up at Polish train stations end up in the hands of volunteers. They took on all the logistics related to the first hours and days of their stay in Poland. The government has completely washed its hands of this matter. Border guards count the arrivals, and then no state service is interested in them. Volunteers give the arrivals a warm meal, organize the first night's sleep, then look for an apartment for the next few days and help them find work. These wonderful people do all this without any government help. It's sad.

Ukrainian women live in hope that they have only come to Poland for a short while. That this war will soon end and they will be able to return to their homes and continue living with their husbands, who will defend their country from the invader. Unfortunately, this will not happen regardless of how and when this war ends. A significant number, or perhaps even the majority, of those fleeing the war will never return home.

Volunteers also do not think about what will happen in a month or a year. They help here and now. From the heart and empathy, which, like the courage and faith of Ukrainians, seem to be boundless.

But the resources available to volunteers will eventually run out. Most of them will have to return to their jobs, and people who have given refugees their apartments will tell their new tenants that they can no longer lend them their place. At the same time, millions more will cross the border.

Meanwhile, the government behaves as if it was unaware of the seriousness of the situation.

Starting to issue PESEL numbers, granting 500+ for Ukrainian children and financial support for people taking in refugees are very much needed, but they do not solve the problem. Polish volunteers alone will not cope with five million Ukrainians, there will be a shortage of private apartments and there will not be enough jobs for newcomers.

Therefore, the Polish government should immediately ask the European Union for help. Just like in 2015, the governments of Greece and Italy, flooded by a 1.5 million wave of refugees from the Middle East, asked the EU for help.

Why doesn't the government do this? I don't know.