As Ukraine’s biggest democratic neighbour, Poland has done everything in its power to help Kyiv. There’s every reason to continue that aid.
There was a moment in the early days of Poland’s aid effort to Ukraine when I was losing sleep, and not just because Russia was once again in full colonial attack mode.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki had authorized a pair of aides known as the Two Michałs to visit the country. His head of chancellery, Michał Dworczyk, and the younger Michał Kuczmierowski were dispatched to find out more about events and take decisions autonomously.
But this was a country at war. The Two Michałs were using the now-empty Polish Embassy in Kyiv at all hours of the day and night during the first months of the conflict. Gray with fatigue, but happy, they cheerily told of how they had mistakenly driven into a minefield somewhere near the front or had to change a flat tire in a snowstorm. It was some time before I felt relaxed enough to resume my previous sleeping pattern.
There is much that divides the political class in Warsaw, but aid for Ukraine is not a part of that. Since the outbreak of Russia’s full-scale invasion three years ago, Polish aid has flowed to Ukraine from both governments. A million Ukrainian refugees continue to find sanctuary in my country.
This is not a game for Poland. It is a matter of the utmost gravity. Ukraine is a friendly, democratic state seeking the freedoms that Poland won through its heroic struggles in the 1980s and before. Russia is a hostile despotism that seeks to once again cast its hateful shadow over the dreams of its neighbours. Putin’s victory would be a disaster for democracy in Central and Eastern Europe.
That explains why Poland — a country close in size to the state of New Mexico and in population to California — has flexed every sinew to aid Ukraine. We initiated military deliveries to Ukraine even before February 24, 2022; the last plane to land on the outskirts of Kyiv before Ukrainian airspace was closed was loaded with Polish grenade launchers and assault rifles, which helped to defend Hostomel airport near Kyiv a few days later. If the Russians had succeeded there, Kyiv would have fallen.
Shortly afterward, Poland delivered Piorun portable surface-to-air missiles, as well as night vision and thermal imaging equipment. We knew what the Ukrainians needed in the nighttime actions around Kyiv and in Donbas. The Russians were not prepared for this and suffered further setbacks.
Despite its desperate early victories, Ukraine was effectively now cut off from the air. At which point, the land route into the country became absolutely critical. Poland has a long border and made extensive use of it.
Within a few days of the Russian attack, an international air hub was ready and operating at Rzeszow airport, around 60 miles from the Ukrainian border. Immediately, planes from all over the world began to arrive — sometimes at a rate of one every 10 minutes. Aid was organized, packed into warehouses belonging to the Polish Government Strategic Reserve Agency (RARS) near the border, and rapidly sent out to Ukraine’s defenders and civilians.
The sheer scale of this effort is not always understood. In the first two years of the war, 14,500 railroad cars and more than 50,000 trucks with weapons, ammunition, food, and medicines had reached Ukraine in this way. Since the Russians began bombing Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, generators and fuel have been added to the aid effort.
My country was the first to hand over the Leopard tanks to Ukraine despite the scepticism of some of our allies. The ever-active head of RARS, Michał Kuczmierowski, (last seen in a snowstorm, above) turned on their engines himself one cold morning near Kyiv in the presence of Prime Minister Morawiecki and Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov.
In total, of the 800 tanks that NATO countries have supplied to Ukraine, 350 have come from Polish stocks, including modernized post-Soviet PT-91 Twardy tanks. Their survival rate at the front surprisingly exceeds that of the more advanced Abrams and Leopards. The same is true of howitzers. French, Norwegian, or British guns are certainly technologically superior to Polish Krabs. But the latter were the only ones to plow on through the mud and beyond the firing limits written into the manufacturer’s guarantee.
This war is, in many ways, a reminder that what matters primarily is not technological sophistication and nominal value, but the will to send equipment, the speed of delivery, and the quantity of what’s delivered; all useful lessons as Europe seeks to build its defences.
Evidence of Polish aid is now everywhere in Ukraine. For example, I was an eyewitness to this remarkable burst of solidarity when in April 2022 I accompanied Prime Minister Morawiecki to the opening of the first modular town for internally displaced people in Lviv. Over the next few months, RARS set up more than a dozen others — providing shelter to a total of more than 10,000 people.
Poland is aware of the alternative to Ukrainian statehood. It would mean Russian troops on almost all of our eastern border from Belarus southward. It would mean a new East Germany in the heart of Europe. It would mean that Poland had become the main frontline state against the Kremlin’s despotic expansionism once again. We simply cannot allow that to happen.
By Bartosz Cichocki. Bartosz Cichocki is a business consultant at Missing Elements Consulting. He was previously Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland, 2017-2019, and Ambassador of Poland to Ukraine, 2019-2023. Article and pictures first time published on CEPA web page. Prepared for publication by volunteers from the Res Publica - The Center for Civil Resistance.
