Borders should not be decided by “tanks or terrorists”, the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Poland Radoslaw Sikorski said, speaking to The Hindu here at the Jaipur Literature Festival, ahead of his meeting with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on Monday. Mr. Sikorski, hoping that India and Poland could have a closer understanding on the issue of Russia’s war in Ukraine, also said that Poland is “pleased” India has begun reducing its dependence on Russian oil, four years after the war in Ukraine began. The Polish Foreign Minister, one of a number of high-level visitors from Europe to India this month, said the EU-India Free Trade Agreement (FTA) is still being negotiated, but he hoped it would be signed at the EU-India summit on January 27. Excerpts:
You have referred to India’s cut in buying Russian oil and said you are ‘pleased’ and ‘satisfied’ — are you convinced that this is a permanent shift, or are these just market adjustments?
Well, Russia lost its most lucrative market for gas and oil in Europe as a result of its aggression against one of its neighbours (Ukraine). We hope India understands our pain, in the sense that we were both colonised in the 19th century; Poland was, so was Ukraine. And we, I think both [India and Poland] believe that the time of European empires trying to colonise other people should be over, and I think both of our regions appreciate how transitory and sometimes accidental borders are, but we also believe that they should be decided through negotiation and adjudication, and not by sending tanks or terrorists.
Even so, when it comes to India’s relationship with Russia, you are aware of how old it is, there is India’s traditional dependence on Russia, and President Vladimir Putin visited Delhi last month.
Well, [India has] invested a lot of money in Russian military equipment and it’s not working very well [in the war in Ukraine]. President Putin should very grateful that India didn’t send him to the International Criminal Court at The Hague, where he is indicted for stealing children, kidnapping Ukrainian children, and trying to make them into Russians, and then sending them to war against their own homeland.
Have you said this to the Indian government? Do you think that the Indian government is shifting its position, in a sense, due to what Poland has been saying?
Well, India is such a huge country that we understand that it needs to have relationships with everyone. But we hope that India shares our view that principles still matter, that a world in which the law of the jungle becomes acceptable is not a good world. I understand that importers always want a bargain, and Russia is forced to sell its oil at a huge discount, and it’s sometimes tempting to take advantage of that, but countries should be careful, because we have successfully sanctioned the Russian “shadow fleet”. And so even when Russia sells [crude oil], they might not be able to deliver it.
Is there any sign of a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire? Poland has been seen as anti-ceasefire, given its transfer of weapons and fighter aircraft…
That’s not anti-ceasefire. That’s just helping the victim of aggression resist the aggressor. Doing nothing means that the aggressor wins. And yes, the war can be over as soon as Mr. Putin decides to stop.
Do you think the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is as united as it was four years ago?
[Mr.] Putin thought as democracies, we [the NATO] were pathetic and divided and degenerate, and here we are, four years later. We have supported Ukraine to the tune of about 190 billion euros. We now finance the war, the U.S. doesn’t. We have pledged another 90 billion euros to Ukraine over the next two years, and [President] Putin is beginning to run out of resources. So we are tougher, when awakened by brutality, we can be more consistent than authoritarians think.
Even so, as we speak, NATO forces, or European forces, are gathering in Denmark for a military exercise. The country that they are most worried about is not Russia, but the U.S. Is NATO actually in danger of falling apart over the latest threats [of tariffs] by the United States?
We have had a war within NATO before, when Turkey landed its paratroopers in Cyprus (the invasion in 1974). We survived it, and we’ll survive this one, too.
You’ve spoken about international law. Yet many in India have watched Europe speak about the war in Ukraine, but not imposing the same kind of sanctions or action during the Israeli war in Gaza, where 70,000 have died, or in Venezuela — this gives the impression that for Europe, lives in the non-western part of the world don’t count as much.
I disagree with this interpretation, but I understand the sensitivity. The Russian invasion of Ukraine was particularly blatant, and condemned by one of the most overwhelming votes at the UN in the history of the General Assembly. Whereas in Gaza, as you know, it wasn’t Israel that started, it was Hamas who killed and kidnapped hundreds of people. Well, that makes it morally different. And in Venezuela, I agree that [the U.S. action] wasn’t exactly consistent with procedures, but [President] Maduro was not a legitimate leader.
Everything you said is also something you have accused Mr. Putin of invading neighbouring countries — Israel has done it with each of its neighbours, the U.S. has done it with Venezuela.
Europe has consistently condemned illegal Israeli settlements in Gaza, in the West Bank. We have condemned the overuse of force in response to the Hamas attack. We have a fully accredited Palestinian Ambassador in Warsaw, so we recognise the independence of Palestine. I have told my Palestinian counterparts that if the Palestinians adopted the way of Mahatma Gandhi in striving for their independence, they would long ago have had their independent state, but they chose the way of Arafat and of ‘Arab machismo’ and of confronting Israel and the United States in the one field in which they have no chance of success, which is to say the military field. When you start a war and you lose, your situation worsens.
Do you see the Gaza peace proposal succeeding?
I hope so. Sometimes you need out of the box thinking and, and when regular diplomacy fails, you need creative solutions, so Poland has delivered humanitarian assistance. Poland offers student grants to Palestinian students. There’s not that much we can do, but what we can do, we are doing to lessen human suffering.
You are here in India ahead of the EU-India summit. Do you expect to see the EU-India FTA being signed next week?
I hope so. There are, of course, both benefits and some sectoral difficulties where we need to be sensitive to each other’s pain. But, overall, I think President Trump deserves credit for encouraging us to sign, first the agreement with Latin America (the EU-Mercosur FTA), and now with India.
Do you think that the U.S. push for tariffs speeded up the process between the EU and India?
I think so. Because for years past, when I asked Indian politicians whether they wanted such an agreement, they were not as interested, but since President Trump’s ‘liberty tariffs’, I think the thinking has changed.
You said there are certain sensitivities that still have to be dealt with — in particular agricultural market access is believed to have been kept out of the deal. Would Poland support that?
The negotiations are still continuing, and we are talking about thousands of products, so it’s all very complicated, and let’s leave that to the experts. Since [the time] communism collapsed in Poland, when the iconic picture from Poland was [one] of food queues, we are now a huge food exporter. I believe that there are very few product lines in which [India and Poland’s] agriculture competes with one another. Together, [India and EU] are two billion people. So there is a great deal of potential. And you have a political system which is more compatible with us than some others. So we have hope [of a deal].
