Biden in Poland: New proximity to Warsaw

It was an important visit for the recently sleepy provincial airport of Rzeszów-Jasionka in southeastern Poland when Joe Biden’s Air Force One landed there on Friday afternoon. The US President began his two-day visit to Poland here for two reasons: Firstly, several thousand US soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division have been stationed in Rzeszów since February allowed to play Ukraine.

On the other hand, several of the approximately 2.1 million refugees who have crossed the border from Ukraine are housed there. Nobody knows exactly how many are still in Poland: Hundreds of thousands have travelled on by train or bus, in their own car or from Polish airports: to Germany, Sweden, England, the Netherlands, Switzerland or even Canada.

Hundreds of thousands are likely to have stayed with relatives or friends in Poland. Even before the war began, the number of Ukrainians living in Poland, most of whom had come to work on temporary visas, was estimated at up to a million. And tens or hundreds of thousands more have found shelter in gyms, schools and other emergency shelters across Poland – some in the small town of Przemysł, east of Rzeszów.

At the beginning of his visit, Biden thanked the US soldiers stationed in Rzeszów for their commitment. Later he and Poland’s President Andrzej Duda were informed by aid organizations about the situation of the Ukrainian refugees. Biden regretted that he was unable to visit Ukraine himself for security reasons – but the US President will meet Ukrainian refugees in Warsaw on Saturday. Biden flew there on Friday evening and stayed in a hotel in the center of town.

Poland becomes Moscow’s target

Duda said on Polish television that Biden’s visit shows “the importance of Poland today”. In fact, Poland is not only central because of the reception of the refugees and as a weapons hub. As a reconnaissance center for US secret services about the Russian war, including radar and radio tracking, it is also probably the most important NATO location – and is therefore now also a target for Moscow. On March 21, Russia’s ex-president and ex-prime minister Dmitry Medvedev vehemently accused Poland of being a US puppet, cultivating “pathological anti-Russian hostility” and made up of “political idiots.”

Images of a country welcoming hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians with open arms have eclipsed images from just a few months ago when Polish soldiers forcibly drove refugees back to Belarus during the artificially created refugee crisis created by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin Polish-Belarusian border. The crisis continues to this day on a small scale: Only on Thursday did 70 foreigners try to “illegally cross” the border with Poland, according to the Polish border guard. Nevertheless, the images of the Poles, who are helpful towards Ukrainians, dominate. “Our society is impressing the world again – and we should play this card”, Gazeta Wyborcza.

Before the war broke out, the US President maintained a conscious distance from Poland’s national-populist government: Biden and his staff were just as thorny about the extensive abolition of an independent judiciary as the actions against gays and lesbians or against independent media – most recently even against Poland’s largest private television station TVN, owned by Americans.

The dismantling of the rule of law in Poland continues unabated: at the same time as the outbreak of war, the constitutional court, controlled by Poland’s de facto head of government Jarosław Kaczyński, ruled that Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (“right to an independent court”) contradicts the Polish constitution. Before Biden’s visit, the Polish edition of Newsweek stated that, despite the harsh anti-Russian rhetoric, Kaczyński’s views and actions on the elimination of an independent judiciary, the media, the economy and an ideologized policy on history coincided almost completely with those of the Kremlin.

President Biden also wanted to set an example on Saturday: According to Poland’s government spokesman, not only Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki should take part in the planned visit to Ukrainian refugees in Warsaw, but also Warsaw’s Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, former presidential candidate and one of the best-known opposition politicians. After further talks with Poland’s President Duda on Saturday afternoon, the US President also wants to give a speech in Warsaw before flying back to Washington.