Today, Europe needs nothing more than a strong Polish leadership. Poland already counts among the largest providers of military and financial assistance to Ukraine, and Poles have admirably shouldered the burden of Ukrainian refugees flowing into the country. Diplomatically, however, Warsaw punches well below its weight in the EU.
That is a problem in an age when the EU’s natural leader, Germany, has lost its way. Just two days into the exhumations in Izyum, which have exposed yet more alleged war crimes by Russian forces, Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz characterised the tone of his phone conversations with Vladimir Putin as ‘friendly’, notwithstanding their ‘very, very different, indeed widely differing views’.
German officials, meanwhile, are flip-flopping: one minute admitting that the Bundeswehr’s stocks have been thoroughly depleted, then twisting themselves into pretzels to argue that it would be unreasonable for Germans to transfer Leopard tanks to Ukraine. To its credit, Germany has already provided Ukraine with howitzers and anti-aircraft Gepard tanks.
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