Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - March 13, 2022, Winnipeg, Manitoba ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COMA8 C M Y K PAGE A8 SUNDAY, MARCH 13, 2022NEWS I WAR IN UKRAINE POLAND fears it may be next WARSAW, Poland — Justi-na Dziwicka was not yet born when Poland shed the shackles of the Soviet Union and joined NATO, the U.S.-led alliance that would protect the Eastern European country. But the child-care worker is getting a swift lesson on what a Russian-generated conflict looks like. “I feel that the war came to my coun- try,” she said. “And I feel terrible.” Dziwicka stood on a street corner here in central Warsaw, the Polish cap- ital, waiting to cross a busy boulevard. On one side of the street was the main train station, where on her commute, Dziwicka sees increasingly large num- bers of refugees filling the corridors and spilling outside. On the other side of the street was the hotel where U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris stayed for her visit last week. Harris was holding meetings in Poland on Thursday and Romania on Friday with the countries’ leaders in an effort to reassure the deeply nervous former East Bloc nations that with their membership in NATO — and backing from Washington — they remain safe. The two countries also want assis- tance in sheltering many of the more than 2.1 million refugees who have fled the ferocious Russian onslaught in Ukraine. It is the fastest-growing exodus in Europe since the Second World War. “I’m here, standing here on the eastern flank of NATO to reaffirm our commitment, the United States commitment to Poland and our NATO allies,” Harris told Polish Prime Minis- ter Mateusz Morawiecki on Thursday in her first appearance here. They sat with empty tea cups in Morawiecki’s official office. Both said they wish they were meeting under different circum- stances. Harris thanked the Polish people and said she would discuss ongoing promises to provide defensive weapons to Poland and help with processing refugees. At 22, Dziwicka has never known a time when her country was aligned with Russia. Poland on Saturday celebrated the 23rd anniversary of the day it joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Still, there’s a sense of vulnerability and fear that is more pronounced in Poland and Romania — as well as the three Baltic states northeast of Poland — than in older NATO member coun- tries, given both their history of Soviet domination and their location. Poland sees itself once again in the crosshairs of a superpower struggle with poten- tially catastrophic outcomes. “We have one crazy man… and he sits in the bunkers,” said Max Mro- zowski, a 39-year-old entrepreneur on a smoking break, referring to Rus- sian President Vladimir Putin. “He’s killing people, slaughtering children in Ukraine.” “So it may also come here,” he said. “You never know. He might find any kind of reason to start it.” Mrozowski sounds stoic but is keeping close tabs. He knew Poland’s NATO anniversary was near. He thinks about Hitler and the Second World War and draws worrisome comparisons. Asked about the idea of his country sending fighter jets to Ukraine, he cites Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s calls for more help from the West but then points out the poten- tial for giving Putin pretext for more aggression. “It’s a matter of us helping the Ukrai- nians because now we are just fighting for our understanding of freedom and our understanding of human rights and current civilization,” he said. “So this is the whole thing.” The Harris mission became compli- cated at the last minute when Polish officials — surprising their U.S. coun- terparts — announced that rather than send Soviet-era fighter jets to Ukraine, as Ukraine has sought, they were send- ing the aircraft to the U.S. Air Force base at Ramstein, Germany. This was Poland’s way of extricating itself from a transaction that risked in- viting Putin’s wrath. But it turned what had been careful U.S. negotiations on their head and left American officials struggling to make sense of it. W HILE rejecting the offer and calling the Polish preference to have the U.S. deliver the planes to Ukraine “untenable,” Biden administration officials have sought to downplay the obvious wrinkle in much- vaunted NATO unity. The Pentagon then announced it had positioned two Patriot antimissile batteries in Poland as what an official called a “purely proactive” measure to protect NATO’s eastern flank from Russian air attack — another sign of deep worries about Moscow’s aggres- sion. “The Poles are nervous, of course they’re nervous,” Daniel Fried, a veter- an diplomat and former U.S. ambassa- dor to Poland now at the Atlantic Coun- cil think tank in Washington, said in an interview. “They have the Russian army destroying their neighbour… and making nuclear threats. (Putin) hates the Poles, not quite as much as he hates the Ukrainians.” This presents Harris with a formi- dable challenge, Fried said. “She must listen to the Poles,” he said, to their con- crete concerns and fears. And she must explain the longer-term U.S. posture toward Russia and elaborate not what the U.S. cannot do for Ukraine — like send fighter jets — but what it can do. “She knows this is messy,” Fried said. “She’s going to have a helluva time.” Poland’s tumultuous history — just in the last century — took it from a Nazi occupation in the 1930s and ’40s that bore witness to some of the deadliest slaughters of Jews, to the ranks of one of the largest economic powers within the Soviet sphere. It then took the lead of the anti-communist movement under the auspices of labour leader Lech Walesa, garnering crucial support from then-Pope John Paul II, a Pole. More recently, a once-flourishing democracy has taken a regressive turn against judicial and press freedoms under President Andrzej Duda, an ad- mirer of former U.S. president Trump, a fellow right-wing populist. Warsaw’s modern glass skyscrap- ers share a skyline with the Stalinist Palace of Culture and Science over low- rise Soviet-era apartment buildings, a mix of architecture reflecting decades of change. Younger people with bright- ly dyed hair and fashionable shoes eat from chic cafés that serve traditional pierogis along with coffee and cakes. But another chapter unfolds now at the train station. Refugees from Ukraine who spilled into the tents outside the station carried suitcases or pulled pet dogs on leashes, having left behind apartments and relatives, not knowing where they would wind up. Volunteers handed out water and sandwiches and processing paperwork; a truck provided free internet access. Mamoud Krgbo, who was born in Sierra Leone and met his wife in Ukraine, stood with her and their 4-year-old daughter, trying to hail a cab to the airport. They had plane tick- ets to Ireland — a country they chose in a hurry — but did not know whether they would be allowed in. He had little hope that Harris or any other politician would be able to give Ukraine the help it needs. “It’s a disappointment,” he said. “They are just talking.” — Los Angeles Times With hostile Russian ally Belarus on its flank, Poles worry Putin won’t stop with Ukraine NOAH BIERMAN AND TRACY WILKINSON NOAH BIERMANN / LOS ANGELES TIMES Justina Dziwicka, a child-care worker, has never known life under Soviet domination. She worries that may change. SEAN GALLUP / GETTY IMAGES People board a train following their arrival from war-torn Ukraine at the border crossing in Medyka, Poland, last Wednesday. A_08_Mar-13-22_FP_01.indd 8 2022-03-12 5:44 PM ;