Some 20 years ago at the editorial office of Przekrój in Warsaw, Andrzej Łomanowski, a reporter at the weekly’s foreign desk who had previously worked as Ukraine correspondent for Wyborcza, told me a story from mid-1990s Kyiv.
It was a summer afternoon in Kyiv. People were sitting at the coffee tables surrounding Independence Square (perhaps today better known by its Ukrainian name, Maidan Nezalezhnosti). Suddenly, a black BMW drove up and stopped between some of the tables, and several rather large gentlemen got out. “Cars are not allowed on the square!” pointed out one of the seated guests.
Thinking they deserved much more respect, the rather large gentlemen responded with aggression. But others sitting nearby backed the person who had made the initial comment. Things got heated. The gentlemen, surrounded by the crowd, were told to go where the defenders of Snake Island last week told the Russian warship to go.
The situation was clearly escalating. One of the gentlemen pulled out a gun but that did not faze the people surrounding him. He then fired into the air and threatened to kill the leader of the crowd.
The leader responded with laughter. “You have seven bullets left [this indicates the weapon was probably a Makarov], you won’t kill us all. Get lost.” And so the bully did as he was told, leaving with his Makarov and his friends in the BMW. And the people went back to their tables to continue enjoying their fine summer evening.
After the war broke out, no-one really believed that Russia would be cut off from SWIFT; that Germany would announce a 180-degree turnaround on its long-standing policies on security and energy with Russia; that Biden, speaking with almost Reaganite resolve, would sound more radical than Trump; or that Poland would become a shining role-model lauded by the global media.
So, how did this happen? All it took was for Ukraine to withstand Russia’s initial hit.
Much of the Western political scene had expected Ukraine to get scared and fall fast, allowing everyone to go back to doing business as usual with Russia. But the reality was a surprise, and they were forced to quickly adapt.
It was enough to know that when Ukrainians are being threatened by a person holding a gun, they just calmly count how many bullets are left in the magazine.
These are easy opinions to express from the sidelines, where Poland now stands. But it wasn’t always like this.
Poland is not a country at the forefront of war today. Someone else is doing the fighting. So I find myself behaving like a typical European. I express my indignation on social media, paste the blue and yellow flag on my Facebook avatar and write texts praising Ukrainian heroism. As a Pole, however, I have several historical experiences that – even if I really wanted to – are not easy to forget.
On August 1, 1944, an uprising against the German occupiers broke out in Warsaw. The insurgents managed to take over a large part of the city. The Germans reacted with a brutality that is unimaginable today. During the first few days, during the Wola Massacre alone, they murdered tens of thousands of civilians in the city.
The bloody fights lasted 63 days. They ended with the annihilation of Warsaw.
At the end of August, the insurgent radio station Błyskawica [Lightning] broadcast a poem, written by Zbigniew Jasiński. The author referred to London’s cold reaction to the uprising. Radio broadcasts reached Poland, in which admiration for the heroism of the insurgents was translated into serious music and descriptions of the devastation of Warsaw. The poem ends with the sentences: “We have enough spirit for us and it will suffice for you! No need to applaud! We want ammunition! ”
President Zelensky, somewhat eerily, is saying the same thing today.
In September 1939, Poles waited for help to come from Great Britain and France, like todays Ukrainians are waiting for Western military support. And so the Poles waited. Neither French nor British came. The French did not want to die for Gdańsk, the British were still so impressed by the successes of their own foreign policy (the one that culminated in Munich in September 1938) that they still didn’t believe that it had failed.
One may wonder: If Western powers had attacked the Germans with all their might, would history have turned out differently? Maybe there wouldn’t be millions of victims and maybe there wouldn’t have been a Holocaust.
Today, it is easier for me to understand the reluctance of Western societies to leave their comfort zones. I’m in such a zone myself. However, I’m terrified of a vision that people will get bored with watching pictures of war, and politicians will no longer feel the social pressure to act. I’m also terrified that Ukrainians will be left to fight their war in total isolation.
Ukraine is shedding its blood in a fight for Western values. If it does so alone, with only empty words of support, what does it say about the very existence of those values? There would be little left to admire but the remarkable ability of Ukrainians to count how many bullets are still left in the enemy’s gun.
Author:
Marcin Kędryna, Deputy Editor in Chief, “Gazeta Lubuska,” and a long-standing associate of Poland’s President, Andrzej Duda
