In the past week, Ukraine and Poland have exchanged sharp diplomatic statements, two Belarusian helicopters have violated Polish air space and the 14th convoy of Wagner mercenaries arrived in Belarus, whose president says he can barely stop them setting off on “excursions” into Poland.
So what? If Wagner troops were to cross the Polish border or enter the Suwalki Gap (more below), they would immediately test the strength of Nato’s Article 5 security guarantee for all its members.
The scenario may seem far-fetched but
Kernel of discord. Ukrainian-Polish mutual discontent started with Poland’s blocking of overland Ukrainian grain transport for fear of antagonising Polish producers as elections loomed. The relationship cooled again yesterday when a senior aide to Poland’s president said Ukraine wasn’t showing enough gratitude for Poland’s help, and both countries summoned each other’s ambassadors for a dressing down.
Ukraine’s President Zelensky says there shouldn’t be “a single crack” in the two countries’ unity against Russia. He’s right.
Hybrid threat. 8,000 Wagner mercenaries are now “resting” in Belarus after their abortive mutiny in Russia in June. That’s not enough for an attack on Ukraine from the North but it’s not inconceivable that some might try a probing incursion into the Suwalki Gap – the narrow land bridge between Belarus and the Russian Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad.
Suwalki what? Sixty miles long and not much wider than the Polish-Lithuanian border, this narrow strip was considered a potential flashpoint by General Ben Hodges, commander of US forces in Europe until 2017. He said Russia and Belarus would be “interested” in it in the event of any potential conflict with Nato, which is what Putin claims is already unfolding in Ukraine.
Nato test? Might Putin use Wagner mercenaries to test Nato’s “red lines”? It would be an appalling risk but his ally in Minsk has shown he’s ready to provoke his western neighbour. Poland’s deputy foreign minister Piotr Wawrzyk confirmed yesterday that helicopters from Belarus violated Polish and therefore Nato airspace. A Pentagon spokesman said Nato forces’ positions had not changed but that they would ensure “every square inch of Nato remains safe”.
Dry run. Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian dictator, tried weaponising east-west migration in 2021 by briefly opening his western border to let refugees out. To note:
Any hint of hesitation in a Nato response to such provocations would be seen by Putin as an invitation. As the late US Senator John McCain once said, nothing provokes Putin more than weakness.
And finally… David Brooks’ column in today’s NYT is compulsory reading for anyone still perplexed by Trump’s ability to fire up his base with every new criminal indictment. For those without a subscription, the gist of Brooks’ argument is that Trump voters don’t just feel excluded from contention for capitalism’s glittering prizes by America’s metropolitan elite. They are.
Photograph Attila Husejnow/SOPA/LightRocket via Getty Images