Today's WorldView: With Russia at Poland’s doorstep, Warsaw tries to woo Western critics

Sunday, March 27, 2022

Try four weeks FREE, then $4 every four weeks for one year

Read online

Developments from Ukraine, global analysis and top reads.

By Anthony Faiola
with Sammy Westfall

Developments from Ukraine

• President Biden's nine ad-libbed words about Putin at the end of a 27-minute speech — "For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power" — have drawn the world's attention, even as the White House sought to clarify the remarks. Experts, diplomats and leaders sought to determine what Biden said, what it meant — and, if he didn't mean it, why he said it.

• The war in Ukraine is proving extraordinarily lethal for Russian generals. Ukrainian officials say their forces have killed seven generals on the battlefield, felled by snipers, close combat and bombings. If the numbers prove accurate, the Russian generals have been either extremely unlucky or successfully targeted — or both.

• Russia's communications regulator warned Russian media not to publish a new interview with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, and said it will investigate the outlets that directed it. In the interview, Zelensky called on Russians to "support the truth."

• Qatari and Saudi officials are pointing to what they say are unjust inconsistencies in how the West responds to humanitarian strife: acting swiftly to help Ukraine in a way that conflicts and refugees in the Middle East have not seen. Qatar's foreign minister said the overwhelming response should likewise be applied when the world is "witnessing the brutality" against Syrians, Palestinians, Libyans, Iraqis or Afghans.

With Russia at Poland's doorstep, Warsaw tries to woo Western critics

President Biden participates in an arrival ceremony with Polish President Andrzej Duda at the Presidential Palace on March 26 in Warsaw. (Evan Vucci/AP)

Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Poland's relations with its close allies, the United States and the European Union, were, at best, strained. Charging Warsaw with democratic backsliding, the European Union slapped punitive fines on the right-wing Polish government. Polish President Andrzej Duda — a staunch ally of Donald Trump — took several weeks to officially congratulate President Biden after the 2020 elections. That came after Biden, on the campaign trail, had lumped Poland in with a rogues gallery of nations he accused of tilting away from democracy.

But Warsaw's beef with its Western allies seemed to melt away Friday, as Duda and Biden clasped hands at a Polish airport less than 60 miles from the Ukrainian border. Duda gushed over the strength of U.S.-Polish ties, heralding Washington's role in maintaining "stability and world peace" in the face of "Russian aggression" against "democratic and free nations."

That moment crystallized what observers see as an attempt by Warsaw to mend fences with Washington and Brussels amid a growing Russian threat, with Warsaw reluctantly moving to address concerns that it is out of step with the rest of democratic Europe.

What's going on in Warsaw may amount to the start of strategic recalculation, Daniel Fried, a former U.S. ambassador to Poland, told me on Sunday.

"They're starting to say, 'If we're going to fight Putin's influence in the name of Europe and democracy, then we have to start to embrace Europe and democracy," Fried said.

The early signs of a possible Polish rethink — including the blocking of controversial education and media laws, and attempts to acquiesce to E.U. demands over the independence of Polish judges — come as Warsaw knows that now is a moment to keep its friends close.

A NATO nation resting only a few dozen miles from the westernmost Russian bombs falling on Ukraine, Poland is on the front lines of the gathering threat from Vladimir Putin's Russia. Poland has borne the brunt of a historic wave of fleeing Ukrainian refugees. As the Kremlin's propaganda machine ratchets up its rhetoric — it has called Poland a U.S. "vassal" and den of "pathological Russophobia" — Washington has more than doubled the number of U.S. troops there. Staking out the toughest line against Putin within the European Union, Warsaw is calling for a full boycott of Russian oil and gas.

Yet, in a struggle between Russian authoritarianism and Western freedom, Poland is an imperfect carrier of the democratic torch. Its struggle to emerge from the yoke of Soviet aggression during the Cold War became a stirring example of courage in the name of freedom. But in more recent years, its right-wing Law and Justice party has moved to weaken the independence of its courts, pressure the media, demonize the opposition and assault gender and LBGT rights.

I visited the country in late 2016, just after Trump's election, to document what critics of Poland's government saw as the beginning of a neo-Dark Age ushered in by the country's right-wing populists.

The then one-year-old government had already taken steps to limit the powers of the constitutional court, chipping away at checks and balances. A draft law was poised to allow government-appointed governors the right to decide on future permits for demonstrations. Cheered on by arch conservatives, its culture wars were in full swing. It defunded public assistance for in vitro fertilization treatments. In a Facebook chat, a top equal rights official mused that Polish hotels should not be forced to provide service to Black or gay customers. After the official stepped down for unrelated reasons, his successor rejected an international convention to combat violence against women because it appeared to argue against traditional gender roles.

The European Union expressed particular outrage over the 2019 creation of a disciplinary chamber at Poland's supreme court that critics say can be used to control judges. Poland's refusal to abolish the chamber led to E.U. fines of 1 million euro a day , as well as the withholding of 36 billion euros in pandemic recovery aid.

Biden appeared to acknowledge fissures in Poland's democracy — as well as those in the United States — during his landmark speech in Warsaw on Saturday.

"It's not enough to speak with rhetorical flourish, of ennobling words of democracy, of freedom, equality and liberty," Biden said. "All of us, including here in Poland, must do the hard work of democracy each and every day. My country as well."

But Warsaw appears to be moving to relieve tensions with its Western critics. In December, after the White House began warning of a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine, Duda vetoed a controversial media law aimed at silencing criticism from a U.S.-owned news channel, TVN24. In February, Duda offered an olive branch to the European Union, submitting legislation to abolish the offending judicial chamber at the heart of its legal dispute with Brussels.

In presenting the bill, Duda called it "a tool to end the dispute with the European Commission." He added, "We are in a difficult international situation at the moment. … There will be a lot of criticism, but someone had to take this step."

This month, Duda additionally vetoed a new education law that could have further frayed E.U. relations. Backers of the law — which would give the right-wing government more control over extracurricular and educational activities at Polish schools — hailed it as a way to prevent the "moral corruption" of children. But critics decried it as a tool to further restrict school teaching of reproductive health, gender equality or LBGT rights in Poland. In recent days, Duda has additionally dished out rare criticism of Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban — Warsaw's illiberal ally within the European Union — for being soft on Russia.

At least some opponents of the Polish government see the moves as disingenuous. "The Polish government is going to use this war in Ukraine as a smokescreen for the final assassination of the rule of law in Poland," Dariusz Mazur, a spokesman for a group of independent Polish judges, told Politico.

But Fried, who visited Warsaw before Biden's trip, said others in the Polish opposition have begun to praise Duda's effort to step back from hard line policies, and have applauded him for trying to establish new lines of communication with his political opponents.

"I see it as a step toward the center and away from the Polish hard right of politics," Fried told me. Duda "has realized just how serious this is, and that the last thing Poland needs is more division."

1,000 Words

Olga Teplyuk lays in a hospital bed after brain and back surgery at the Brovary central district hospital in Ukraine on March 26. She was wounded together with her husband Oleksandr from Russian shelling that damaged their home on March 22. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)

Viewpoints

Crypto confronts the war in Ukraine

By Jen Wieczner | New York Magazine ● Read more »

The making of Vladimir Putin

By Roger Cohen | The New York Times ● Read more »

Preparing for the unthinkable in Ukraine

By Michael T. Osterholm and Mark Olshaker | Foreign Affairs ● Read more »

Unsecured lines

A Ukrainian serviceman walks past a Russian tank captured after fighting with Russian troops outside Kyiv on March 27. (Marko Djurica/Reuters)

Russian troops in Ukraine have relied, with surprising frequency, on unsecured communication devices such as smartphones and push-to-talk radios, leaving units vulnerable to targeting, and further underscoring the command-and-control deficiencies that have come to define Moscow's month-long invasion, observers say.

"We're seeing them use a lot more unclassified communications because their classified communications capability … for one reason or another, is not as strong as it should be," a senior U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under terms set by the Pentagon, told reporters.

The Russian military possesses modern equipment capable of secure transmission, but troops on the battlefield have reached for simpler-to-use but less-secure lines because of uneven discipline across the ranks, an apparent lack of planning for conducting a sustained fight over long distances, and Russian attacks on Ukraine's communication infrastructure that it, too, has relied on, experts say.

A European intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss NATO's battlefield assessments, said there have been multiple instances of Russian commanders confiscating their subordinates' personal phones for fear they would unwittingly give away a unit's location.

Similarly, Ukrainian civilians have reported having their phones stolen by Russian troops who use them to speak with one another and with family back home, this official said. Those calls, the official noted, have revealed troops' frustrations and declining morale as Ukraine's military has stymied Russia's advance around key cities, killing thousands of Russians in the process.

There is evidence that the United States and other NATO countries have provided Ukrainian forces with electronic warfare equipment capable of interrupting Russian transmissions and allowing them to target Russian command posts, said Kostas Tigkos, a Russian military expert at the defense analysis firm Janes Group. By destroying Russia's communication nodes, the Ukrainians could pressure their adversaries to use less-secure equipment, he said, increasing the likelihood their conversations will be intercepted or their positions triangulated.

While the Russian military has overhauled its military technology in the last two decades, with some emphasis on modernizing its communication hardware, Tigkos said equipment is only part of the equation. "It's one thing," he said, "to develop a good radio that works well. It's another thing to deploy that radio, build a network, and conduct a complex military operation with thousands of moving parts, and have them work together like a symphony."

Russian military transmissions over unsecured lines have been so prevalent, analysts say, that amateur radio enthusiasts have tuned into them online using sites such as Web SDR. Some conversations have revealed troops' frustrations. In one transmission on March 5, a Russian service member identifies himself as "Blacksmith," rather than a call sign. "Don't say the last names on air!" another responds. The transmission was provided to The Washington Post by Shadow Break International, an open-source intelligence consultancy based in Britain.

In another discussion, Russian soldiers appear to confuse one another by mistaking their callsigns. One identifies himself as "Exchange." Another then says that, in fact, that's his call sign. "You got it all mixed up!" one of them explains. — Alex Horton and Shane Harris