Et was not an easy visit for Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier when he traveled to Warsaw on Tuesday. The program included an encounter with his Polish colleague Andrzej Duda and an encounter with refugee helpers and refugees from the Ukraine. In Warsaw, Steinmeier wanted to express his “great respect and great gratitude” for the commitment of the Poles, according to the Federal President’s Office. They want to show that Germany “stands together with Poland on the side of Ukraine”.
Whether this message falls on the ears of politicians and the general public in Poland is another question. In many eastern EU countries and in Ukraine itself, distrust of Berlin has grown since the Russian invasion began. In Warsaw, groups close to the national-conservative government organized a demonstration in front of the German embassy at the end of March against Germany’s “too pro-Russian” policies.
Around a hundred people also protested in front of the German embassy in Lithuania on Monday evening. One of the speakers was former President Vytautas Landsbergis, the most important symbol of Lithuania’s struggle for independence from the Soviet Union. “Be like Boris,” protesters urged Chancellor Olaf Scholz on a poster – alluding to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who had just visited Kyiv and promised Ukraine more arms supplies.
Strong criticism of Steinmeier
The Ukrainian ambassador Andriy Melnyk had sharply criticized Berlin’s “naïve” Russia policy in recent years, which Steinmeier had helped to shape as foreign minister, among other things. As a result, the Federal President admitted mistakes in his Russia policy last week. “My sticking to Nord Stream 2 was clearly a mistake. We clung to bridges that Russia no longer believed in and that our partners warned us about. We failed with the approach of integrating Russia into a common security architecture.” He was also “wrong, like many others” in his assessment of Vladimir Putin as a person.
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In the opinion of the Warsaw political scientist Rafał Chwedoruk, the Poles are “rather divided” on the question of the extent to which Germany can be relied on as an ally. The government has been relying on the United States for a long time anyway, which is also reflected in Poland’s large orders for the American defense industry. After a phase of estrangement in relations with American President Joe Biden, relations improved at the latest with his visit to Poland at the end of March.
The population largely supports this orientation. According to a survey for the Rzeczpospolita newspaper published on Tuesday, 65 percent of Poles rate the government’s foreign policy in connection with the war as “rather good” to “definitely good”. Almost 30 percent give the answer “rather bad” to “definitely bad”. Among supporters of the opposition, supporters and critics are balanced at 49 percent each.
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