Opinion Q&A: Poland’s President Duda on Ukraine aid, Russian nuclear threat

The Washington Post / USA

By Marc A. Thiessen

Post Opinions columnist Marc A. Thiessen interviewed Polish President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw on Aug. 1. Below, edited excerpts from their conversation:

Marc Thiessen: At the NATO summit when President [Volodymyr] Zelensky criticized the [leaders’ joint statement about Ukraine’s prospective membership], there was criticism of him that he was ungrateful for all the help [given to] Ukraine. That suggests that our help to Ukraine is charity. Is our help to Ukraine charity, or is Ukraine really doing us a favor by giving its children, its lives to defend us against the Russian threat?

Andrzej Duda: I would say it this way: I don’t see it in these categories — neither that we are doing an act of charity for Ukraine, nor that Ukraine is doing charity for us. Let’s start with the fact that Russia’s aggression in Ukraine was not provoked by anyone. No one attacked Russia, just the opposite …

Are we prepared, in the international democratic community, to allow a situation where Russia does not allow the Ukrainian people to choose their own government, to decide which alliances they will belong to and who their allies will be?

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Today, Ukrainians are fighting against Russia in defense of their independence, sovereignty, freedom and their own territory. … They are defending themselves. We are sending them arms. Why? Because we want to support them in defending their own territory. And by we, I don’t just mean we Poles. It is we Americans, we French, we British, we Germans, we the entire democratic world. We Poles have many reasons to supply Ukrainians with weapons …

But the whole democratic world also knows that any aggressor who violates the borders of a democratic state in the 21st century in Europe must be stopped.

One of the reasons given for reluctance to help Ukraine and give them more weapons is that [Vladimir] Putin regularly … threatens to use his nuclear weapons. Are you worried that Putin could actually follow through on that?

No, I think that Russia will not resort to using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. That’s not only because Vladimir Putin won’t use them. I believe that the nuclear arsenal in Russia is under collective control of many people — and that it is not just up to the sole discretion of just Vladimir Putin. So it takes more than one person to decide.

If someone were to ask me about the nuclear threat, I am much more concerned about potential problems with the nuclear power plants in Ukraine. I fear it is more likely that something might happen that would look like a nuclear accident. Because in my view, in my conviction here, the threat of an explosion [at a nuclear plant] is much greater than in the case of using nuclear arms. Keep in mind, you’re speaking with someone who lived through the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant back in 1986, when an atomic plant exploded in their own hands while under Russian control.

Could Poland fight a combined arms operation without long-range weapons and without air power? Because that’s what we’re forcing the Ukrainians to do today. What does Ukraine need that it’s not getting today?

Ukraine has been supplied with long-range artillery, and it is being supplied with long-range artillery to this day. … One could go as far as to say that Ukraine now has much more modern military capabilities than Russia.

The question is: Does Ukraine have enough weapons to change the balance of the war and get the upper hand? And the answer is probably no. They probably do not have enough weapons. And we know this by the fact that they’re not currently able to carry out a very decisive counteroffensive against the Russian military. To make a long story short, they need more assistance.