As soon as Ukraine is over, and it won’t be long, Poland would step in.
Poles don’t intend to fight the Russians —rather they would be like jackals who can’t resist a carcass.
They lay a historical claim over western Ukraine, eye Lviv as one of its own, and after Ukraine gives up, they would arrive in the garb of peacekeepers, with a few other NATO wolves, notably Lithuania, and stay put forever.
At the beck and call of the West, of course.
The Poles look at war as an opportunity: Like they did during the 1st World War, which heralded the end of three empires: Austria-Hungary, Germany and Tsarist Russia (Ottoman, unrelated here, was the fourth).
They sided with the Central Powers, swept Lviv and adjacent territories; forced the hands of civil-war torn Russia (Treaty of Riga, 1921) to cede its provinces; and also Vilnius besides other lands from Lithuania. A few years down the line, after the Munich Pact of 1938, a part of Czechoslovakia was added to its portfolio of acquisitions. (That they were sacrificed to Hitler by their malevolent masters in 1939 is another matter.)
xxx
The truth is Poland, and Ukraine, didn’t exist on the world map before World War 1.
Poland was a historical region; Ukraine a geographical one, and that was about it.
By the end of the 18th century, the historical Poland was split between its three muscular neighbours: Prussia, Habsburgs and the Russians. Ukraine was a booty between the Habsburgs and Russians. It was the Russians, between 1795 and 1917, which held most of what we today call Poland and Ukraine.
The World War I was too good a moment to let it pass for Poland: Only if Russia could collapse. Ukraine was a natural ally in this quest. So Poles sides with the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary). Russia, riven with civil war between the Red and White, did end up giving Poland what it wanted. Jozef Pilsudski, who fought no less than six wars till his death in 1935, was Poland’s man of the moment.
Ironically it was Russia, rather the Soviet Union, which gave Poland its life after World War II by consigning Adolf Hitler and his Germany to ruins. Not just life but Poland also acquired the German territory from the provinces of Silesia, Pomerania and the southern part of East Prussia.
The western Poland of today, one of history’s irony, is nothing but a gift from Stalin.
xxx
Still, Poles suffer from a lingering sense of loss.
The World War II ended up giving Ukraine, then a part of the USSR, many Polish cities, including Lviv, a town of major military and geo-strategic value. (See map below).
Lviv is vital to East-West routes and passes through the Carpathian Mountains. Most railways converge on the city. It’s an industrial hub of nodal importance and has a very strong ethnic presence of Poles to this day.
A “Balkanized Ukraine” would have great geostrategic importance for Warsaw as well as its Western masters.
xxx
Interestingly, the Zelensky regime is indifferent, if not a partner, to such designs of Warsaw-NATO in western Ukraine.
Zelensky vows to use the last Ukrainian to regain Russia-acquired eastern Ukraine but is not assailed by any such nightmare in western Ukraine!
Interesting, isn’t it!
The present-day Ukraine has received weapons and mercenaries; its army is trained by NATO officers; all through the open borders with Poland.
Vladimir Putin says the present Kiev regime is no different to Ukrainian leader Symon Petliura who sold out Galicia and western Volhynia to Poland in exchange for military support in 1920.
xxx
Yet Poland today could only spread itself in western Ukraine in the garb of a peacekeeper.
If it offers the alibi of an unstable border to put its armed soldiers around Kiev, or in Belarus, Russia could take it as a direct NATO intervention. In that case, Poland would open itself to attack from the Russians.
It would imply the Ukraine Conflict would spin out of control, putting the entire humanity at risk.
Poland needs a close watch: Whether due to its own revanchist claims or at the behest of its Western masters, its playing a dangerous game.
Post Script:
In passing, below is a map of Ukraine from a historical perspective.
