Draft dodgers are undermining Ukraine's plea for help
Imagine the reaction in a NATO state if their soldiers were sent to fight for a country whose own young men are too feckless to take up arms against their invader
Poland
Monday
Tuesday
Poland’s MBA scandal has exposed our credentialling culture
In February 2024, Poland’s Anti-Corruption Bureau opened an investigation into the ‘Collegium Humanum Warsaw Management University’, a ‘Private Management School’ opened in 2018 by a man now (for legal reasons) referred to only as Paweł C. That same month, Paweł C was detained by the Public Prosecutor’s Office on suspicion of issuing diplomas in exchange for personal financial gain. Today, the desire for the appearance of wisdom is often greater than the desire for wisdom itself. Poland has an interesting relationship with academic credentials. The Collegium Humanum website boasts of offering ‘prestigious degrees’, including cut-price three-month MBA programmes marketing themselves with the words ‘save 6,200 zlotys and almost a year of studies’. A
Tuesday
A web of rivalries: The Extinction of Irena Rey, by Jennifer Croft, reviewed
Jennifer Croft is a translator of uncommon energy. In 2018 she won the International Booker Prize for her rendering of Flights by Olga Tokarczuk. In 2021, she took on Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob, a great big historical epic. Now she’s written a satirical page-turner set over what one character calls ‘seven toxic, harrowing, oddly arousing, extremely fruitful weeks’. Like members of some ancient mystery cult, eight translators fetch up in a house near a primeval forest in Poland on the Belarus border. The year is 2017. ‘Bedraggled and ecstatic’, they’ve come to translate Szara eminencja (Grey Eminence), a novel about art and mass extinction, by the Stockholm-worthy woman of
Friday
Is Nato ready for a Russian invasion?
Countries whose last experience of combat was against Islamic State terrorists are having to adjust to very different circumstances
Thursday
Nobody can stop Vladimir Putin... from talking
The Russian premier managed to smother the excitement of the interview under an iron curtain of his own autodidactism
Wednesday
It's time to give Poland nuclear weapons
In a post-American world, a Polish nuclear umbrella could help secure Europe’s Eastern flank
Thursday
Donald Tusk sends police after journalists
He may believe his illiberal methods are justified in his quest to vanquish the ‘darkness and evil’ of the past
Tuesday
‘The truth will make us free’: students on the march in post-war Europe
One night in early autumn 1982, two young men roamed the streets of Lodz in Poland. It was a dark period in the country’s history – one of many. A mass movement led by the Solidarnosc trade union had recently attempted to challenge the communist regime which had kept the country under a heavy Soviet yoke, with little to offer but food shortages, economic decline and the erosion of national identity. The authorities had responded with force to the widespread strikes, declaring martial law in December 1981 and rolling tanks into cities. Protests were silenced with guns. Thousands were arrested and dozens killed. When Waldemar Fydrych and Piotr Adamcio wandered
Monday
Law and Justice has lost. Where does Poland go now?
No future Polish government is likely to disturb the existing consensus on Ukraine policy, or on the country’s impressive rearmament
Friday
How immigration came to define the Polish elections
Law and Justice believes most Poles do not want to see a return to the status quo ante
Thursday
Poland's relationship with Ukraine reaches breaking point
Faced with the choice between bankrupting its own farmers and defying Brussels, Warsaw has chosen the latter
Tuesday
Nato membership for Ukraine would guarantee peace in Europe
Membership is only way to prevent tensions from getting the better of Kyiv and its neighbors
Wednesday
Poland’s battle with the EU over migrant quotas
Another day, another spat between Warsaw and Brussels. This time, Poland has declined to participate in the European Union’s latest plan to relocate migrants and asylum seekers within the bloc, with countries who refuse being expected to pay €20,000 per refugee. Hungary has also voted against the pact, while Malta, Lithuania, Slovakia, Bulgaria have quietly abstained. On 15 June, the Polish parliament (the Sejm) went further and passed a resolution opposing the plan, with the ruling conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) announcing a national referendum on the matter. The referendum will take place on the same day as the general election in either October or November this year. ‘We
Friday
Lies about the Katyn massacre added insult to the horror
On the train the journalists dined on caviar, served on silver plates. But through the lace curtains they could see wounded soldiers
Monday
Central Europe has shaped our culture for centuries – yet we still find the region baffling
The region has shaped our culture for centuries
Saturday
Poland, 1968: the last pogrom
‘Are you Jewish?’ the officious-looking Dutch diplomat asked my dad. ‘Yes’, he said, realising at that very moment, everything had changed. He was no longer Polish; the culture he had been born in, the citizenship he held, the language he spoke, the country he loved – it all meant nothing. He was just Jewish. He couldn’t be both. The diplomat stamped my father’s papers and he left for a new life in western Europe. Up to 20,000 Jews, including my mother, were hounded from Poland at the end of the 1960s. They were accused of supporting Israel in a virulent anti-Semitic campaign led by the communist government. This anti-Jewish campaign
Tuesday
Europe’s centre of gravity is shifting towards Poland
Russia’s war against Ukraine has exposed the impotence of the western-European establishment
Wednesday
The Nord Stream blasts are Putin's warning shot to the West
It can hardly be accidental that this took place just before Baltic Pipe was inaugurated
Wednesday
Why Germany must pay war reparations to Poland
Poland is still reeling from the effects of World War Two, writes its prime minister
Sunday
The forgotten history of Poland and Ukraine
Since the outbreak of war in February there has been an overwhelming focus on the historical links between Russia and Ukraine, partly to counter Putin’s grand assertions that Kyiv belongs to Moscow. But this spotlight on Russia has meant the important history of Poland and Ukraine has been fatally overlooked. Ukraine was part of the Polish state for longer than it was inside Russia – and this is key to understanding why Ukrainians are different from Russians. In other words, it is impossible to comprehend Ukraine’s history without examining the impact of both Poland and Russia. A thousand years ago the people who now call themselves ‘Ukrainian’ had not yet
