Poland seen as linchpin of Western solidarity and security - NYT
US President Joe Biden's visit to Poland shows a new reality in which Poland suddenly takes centre stage and becomes a linchpin of Western solidarity and security, the New York Times wrote on Friday.
The daily commented this way on both Biden's decision to visit Poland during his European trip, and on the recent anti-Polish text by the former Russian prime minister and current deputy head of the Kremlin's security council, Dmitri A. Medvedev, rebuking Polish actions in the face of the war in Ukraine.
"Russia's rage and President Biden's decision to make Poland his only European stop on Friday and Saturday after summit meetings in Belgium reflect a new reality created by the war in Ukraine: Poland is suddenly the pivot around which many of the West's hopes and Russia's fury turn," the newspaper wrote.
It added that due to the crisis, the Polish government, without retreating from its many disputes with the European Union, has managed to "shake off, or at least obscure, its reputation as Europe's inveterate troublemaker" and assume the position of "an indispensable and trusted ally" of both Brussels and Washington, while "Warsaw has become the capital through which all diplomatic, military and humanitarian roads to Ukraine now pass."
The NYT noted that the war in Ukraine "sundered Poland's close partnership with Hungary," but also put Poland at the centre of a coalition of European countries demanding the punishment of Russian President Vladimir Putin for his invasion of Ukraine.
The daily also cited Sophie Pornschlegel, a policy analyst at the European Policy Centre, the Brussels-based think-tank, who said that Poland's position welcoming so many refugees from Ukraine may change the European Commission's attitude in disputes with Warsaw to "rather lenient".
