While the main political battle between leaders of presidential race (Mr. Jarsław Kaczyński and Mr. Bronisław Komorowski) is still ahead, the discussion has been focused on the question, which of the candidates can push Polish-Ukrainian relations towards improvement?
Polish experts underlined, that it is not the name of a new Poland’s president that genuinely matters. The final choice of Polish people will not remain without importance, but can influence Polish-Ukrainian relations only indirectly, mainly through the general stability of political situation. Poland has achieved a relatively strong position inside the EU and it is here where we can expect more active and effective support of Ukraine’s interests. However, the success of Poland’s policies as well as its readiness to continue playing role of Ukraine’s advocate will strongly depend on signals received from Kyiv.
At the same time, Ukrainian participants have underlined that after the change of political elites at the beginning of this year Ukraine is in the middle of “pragmatic pause”. Ukraine’s foreign policy in the years to come will be rather devoid of sentiments and will reflect interests of representatives of a new administration. Whatever is the name of new Poland’s president, we should not expect the repetition of close personal relations between Polish and Ukrainian leaders (as between Aleksander Kwaśniewski and Leonid Kuchma, Lech Kaczyński and Viktor Yushchenko). In this context Poland is advised to analyze not exclusively Ukraine’s declarative aspirations, but also to look for “points of contact” in the sphere of hard interests of new Ukrainian elites in order to push forward its interests.
Both sides have agreed, that there is a “third player on the field” in the game between Poland and Ukraine. Russia’s policy will remain an important factor of Polish-Ukrainian relations, whatever direction and quality of these relations will finally be chosen.
Please, find some more information about the conference (in Ukrainian) here .
The conference has been supported by US Embassies in Kyiv and Warsaw.
