This episode explores Putin's threat to democracy in Europe and the Ukraine's conflict with Russia since the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Slawomir Sierakowski discusses soft authoritarianism, the strategic significance of sanctions, and further articulates what the war could mean for refugees and energy in Europe.
Guests featured in this episode:
Slawomir Sierakowski, a Polish sociologist and political analyst, with extensive knowledge of not only Ukraine and Russia, but also the potential third party in the current war, Belarus. He is also the founder and editor-in-chief of the Krytyka Polityczna (Political Critique) magazine. His more than 400 articles and op-eds include not only publications in Polish, but regular monthly columns in the international edition of The New York Times and Project Syndicate, among others.
GLOSSARY
What is the “Budapest Memorandum”?
(00:8:02 or p.2 in the transcript)
On December 5, 1994, leaders of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Russian Federation met in Budapest, Hungary, to pledge security assurances to Ukraine in connection with its accession to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as a non-nuclear-weapons state. The signature of the so-called Budapest Memorandum concluded arduous negotiations that resulted in Ukraine’s agreement to relinquish the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal, which the country inherited from the collapsed Soviet Union, and transfer all nuclear warheads to Russia for dismantlement. The signatories of the memorandum pledged to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and inviolability of its borders, and to refrain from the use or threat of military force. Russia breached these commitments with its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and aggression in eastern Ukraine, bringing the meaning and value of security assurance pledged in the Memorandum under renewed scrutiny. Source
What is Nord Stream 2 pipeline?
(00:17:10 or p.4 in the transcript)
The construction of the controversial natural gas pipeline Nord Stream brings gas from Russia under the Baltic Sea to Germany, running parallel to, and expanding the capacity of, the existing Nord Stream pipeline. The project would allow additional Russian gas to flow directly to Germany. Opponents argue that it would increase Russian influence in Germany. This is a concern for Poland, the Baltic states, and the Ukraine, which also fear that they would lose out on revenue from the transport of natural gas via other existing routes. Critics also argue that a new gas pipeline does not fit with the EU’s strategy that aims at replacing fossil with renewable energy in the medium term, which would make Nord Stream 2 a stranded investment.
Nord Stream 2 has been completed with some delay, but hurdles in the certification procedure and political tensions at the Ukrainian-Russian border have held up the project. Source
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SR: Welcome to "Democracy in Question", the podcast series that explores the challenges democracies around the world are facing today. I'm Shalini Randeria, the Rector and President of Central European University in Vienna, and Senior fellow at the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. My guest today is Slawomir Sierakowski, a Polish sociologist and well-known political analyst with extensive knowledge of Ukraine and Russia, and the potential third-party in the current war, Belarus too. He's the founder and editor-in-chief of Krytyka Polityczna, Political Critique, a very well-known magazine in Polish. He writes for the Polish press and contributes regularly monthly columns to The New York Times and Project Syndicate.
The war in Ukraine did not start a month ago with the full-scale Russian invasion aimed at the civilian population. We have ignored the ongoing war in Eastern Ukraine at our own peril for eight years. Slawomir Sierakowski has been one of the few people who has repeatedly warned about the threat Putin has posed to European democracy since the very heady days of the Euromaidan when I first met Slawek. Slawek will also help us understand the strategic significance of the unprecedented sanctions imposed on Russia and their effect on both Russia and the region as a whole.
Since Poland has become the primary destination for Ukrainian refugees, I would also like to discuss with him how the influx of refugees may reconfigure politics in his own country as well as in the European Union. Will the war in Ukraine deliver a blow to the emerging illiberal ethno-nationalist populist alliances across Europe or is the war likely to strengthen their hand? I look forward to discussing these and other issues with my guest today, Slawomir Sierakowski. Slawek, a warm welcome to you on the podcast and thank you so much for joining me today in the midst of all your other preoccupations.
SS: Hello, Shalini. Hello, everybody. Thanks a lot for the invitation.
SR: So, a month ago, the world woke up to the war in Ukraine, a full-scale military invasion. A war so unjust and so unjustifiable that even to name it a war was made a criminal offense in Russia. You have been among the very few who have ceaselessly reminded us that Ukraine has been fighting a defensive war against Russia for eight long years ever since the Russian annexation of Crimea and the setting up of pro-Russian puppet governments in the two Donbas breakaway regions in 2014. So, let me begin by asking you for your assessment of this military invasion and ask you really, what surprised you, Slawek, most so far about the war which you have been predicting in a sense for very long?
SS: Thank you for emphasizing the fact that I was trying to warn everybody I could. And this was not easy. I can even say that Russia is my passion. And at the same time, I couldn't professionally focus on Russia because as a Pole, I was always treated as a person that has certain bias or is a Russophobe. It was much more pragmatic to me to focus on Ukraine or Belarus, or Poland, or Hungary. Everything, but Russia. Somehow, I felt not legitimate in talking about this. You know, being a Bulgarian like Ivan Krastev or American, or anybody but Pole was in a much better position to speak about Russia.
So, for me it's liberating what happened. Of course, it's also liberating intellectually, I think for all of Europe. It opened our eyes. There were many illusions in Germany, maybe there even still are. A lot of illusions in France, lot of I would say, ignorance in Spain and Italy, and other countries which did not help in deterrence, and even in creating any common eastern foreign policy towards Russia. And now it’s a different situation. You know, it's been a month that they're fighting and it's supposed to be two days. And Russians did not achieve even a small success. No major city is occupied by Russia.
So, the myth and maybe this is an answer to your question that one of the biggest surprises is that the strength of Russian army, we know that now it's a myth. It's not really true. Putin is not a brave person. Putin is afraid of everything. Putin is the opposite example of Zelensky or Navalny. So of course, I'm not naive towards Russia, but I don't want Europe or NATO to be so scared as it was before. And I would even say that I don't wanna be too romantic or too naive concerning, what we can really do with Russia. But I think that we can still do more than we are doing and thanks to Zelensky, we're shifting the borders of our imagination. And I hope we will arrive at the proper position in creating the stable new architecture of security in Europe.
SR: So what do you think, Slawek, are the likely short-term scenarios towards that end?
SS: This is probably the biggest question mark because I can imagine a few equally probable scenarios.. One scenario would be that this conflict will be frozen by Russia. If Russia cannot really win, it cannot move forward. What you observed in the recent days is that Ukrainian army is getting back certain areas, certain positions which is amazing, particularly concerning what people had expected before February 24th. If Russia cannot win, Russia is used to freezing conflicts. So, this would be one scenario. Also, trying to make Europe somehow less interested in Ukraine to make Europe more familiar with the situation or on board with the situation. Another possible scenario is some kind of I would say, compromise with Ukraine. And the compromise might look like, neutrality, which personally, I am afraid that this would be an illusion. And I hope Ukrainians will not agree to any neutrality, you know, or any treaty with Russia.
What kind of treaty can you really sign and believe that it will work when Russia never, never respects any treaties? Ukraine already has a treaty with Russia, the Budapest Memorandum from 1994 when Ukraine resigned from nuclear weapons and Russia guaranteed the territorial integrity of Ukraine and security together with United States, Great Britain, and other countries. So signing any treaty with Putin doesn't make much sense, but maybe you have to play this masquerade if there is no other option. Certain concessions for Putin not to lose face may be necessary. So this would be the second scenario.
The third scenario is of course, some kind of change of power in the Kremlin. We don't know if it's possible. We will never know if it would be possible up to the moment when it can happen or it will happen. It happened before, it can happen again. Oligarchs are behaving in a surprising way. We don't know how what happens in the army. For sure what is happening in Ukraine is terrible. So, it has to have certain consequences for the mental attitude in the army. There are some, I cannot say earthquakes, but some shaking inside the system.
The fourth scenario could be some kind of conflict spilled around Ukraine. Belarus could be the third part of this war. But, look at this process of NATO being more and more involved. It's harder and harder for Poland to claim that it is not part of this conflict, you know. Through Poland goes all the military support, logistic support, cyber operations support, and you have politicians, top politicians, here every second day. Biden is coming to Poland. Kamala Harris was here a week ago, Boris Johnson. It’s like, Poland became the center of the game. Also, you know, refugees today are always a part of the war. This is what Putin is counting on, creating such a big outflux of refugees, such a big exodus that it will shake Europe as it shook Europe in 2015. Then comes the question of economic sanctions, which is another part of the war that is hybrid always.
So this conflict is already spilling and if NATO will decide for example, to create humanitarian support, a humanitarian intervention in Ukraine which was, two weeks ago, impossible in our mind. But more and more, we can imagine something like this. Observing what is happening in Mariupol that looks already like Aleppo and tomorrow could look like Warsaw in 1944, which means like 90% of buildings are collapsed, people are dying on the streets. You have pictures that cannot be accepted by regular people. I would say that all scenarios are on the table. I wouldn't even exclude the scenario of nuclear confrontation because of Russia. Not because the West can initiate it, but, there is this stupid distinction between tactical nuclear intervention and like, full-scale. I cannot really believe that here there is any real difference. If Putin decided to conquer a Ukraine that was unconquerable, he can decide to use a nuclear weapon this way or another in Ukraine, over Ukraine, in the air, somewhere over the Black Sea. Then it's another step forward. So I can imagine that the situation is extremely fluid, liquid, flexible, and we are in the center of it.
SR: So Slawek, I was reading some of your earlier pieces along with some of your recent ones. But I went back to some of your 2014 articles, and I found one or two which I do want to quote back to you because they are really so prescient. You have been warning since 2014 about the threat of Putin's aggressive expansionary militarism and you wrote in the The New York Times in 2014, and I quote you, "European weapon manufacturers, foremost among them German and French companies, are arming the Russian military while Russia pays Europe with the money it earns from supplying gas, making Europe energy-dependent on Russia. Meanwhile, European firms are signing multibillion-dollar energy contracts with Russian energy companies, Gazprom and Rosneft." And this is what you wrote in 2014 anticipating if you like, the background to the mutual dependence, but also the foreign exchange necessary of the equipment, military equipment necessary for Putin's war machine.
So the West, I should say the U.S. and the EU, have woken up late to the dangers. They have done I think far too little too late. But the question to you would be, how optimistic are you about this coordinated Western effort now at sanctions, unprecedented sanctions in being able to stop this senseless devastation in Ukraine? Could these sanctions be a mechanism for durable peace between Russia and Ukraine or do you think that the European energy dependency on gas and oil, is so strong that that's going to stand in the way of standing united against Russia?
SS: Short answer would be it's more than we could expect, knowing the fact that Europe was naive, dependent, whatever. But it's still not enough to oust Putin to overcome. And without it, I don't think we can solve this conflict. With Putin as a war criminal, as a person that is able to do what he did, we cannot, like, build any stable security architecture. So, we need something really, really strong and something that would really push Russian society to act. That means that we have to move forward, and we can move forward. There is a room for maneuver. It will cost especially Europeans that there's an inequality between Americans and Europeans. It is a problem because it can create certain …not maybe a conflict, but certain distrust. If Americans would push Europe and at the same time sell gas to Europe, substitute the import in Europe, it can create certain - I would say- bias. You know, we already had it before. The attitude toward China in Europe and in America was different and, you know, Europe and America were diverging. Now we are converging.
It's a question of time. Now, everybody's shocked, but what's gonna happen tomorrow? The day after tomorrow? This gap can come back, and this, I am afraid of. This is why Zelensky is pushing us. Eastern Europe is pushing Western Europe. And I would say did these two most important sanctions which is embargo, so sanctions of resources, and it depends on Germany mostly. You know, if Bulgaria said we are ready just to quit it, Bulgaria that is 100% dependent on Russian gas, then Germany can achieve it. If not tomorrow, then in a year maybe. And we should push them, we should push them. It's gonna cost, but it has to be a cost.
SR: So, another aspect of the role of Poland in the entire energy scenario is because Western Europe, as you very rightly point out, has suddenly realized its urgent need to reduce dependence on Russian oil and gas. But Poland appears to play an interesting role in solving this dilemma, thanks to the Baltic Pipe which ensures the access to Norwegian gas. And yet Poland itself will of course, have to rely both on Russian oil and coal for some time and as you very rightly say, its dependence which the Germans created for themselves hanging on to Nord Stream 2 until the very last moment. But the question here is how much of a source of division will this dependency create? Will it be a source of tension in this broad anti-Putin coalition as everybody now suddenly turns to the Middle East as the new source? The other worry that I have is that the rising energy cost of course, would hit those sections of the population, citizens in Europe, who are likely to have the least incomes to be able to deal with all the inflation, the price rise, the rising energy costs that this is going to lead. And this will also cause, I think, a political upheaval in many European societies.
SS: I'm less worried about Europeans. I'm more worried about Africa or countries that are developing or just poor because Russia and Ukraine are some of the biggest producers of food. And this can be the big problem, which immediately means refugees at the gates of Europe. So, this can be the most serious consequence. As for Poland, I disagree strongly with making Poland or treating Poland now as a golden child because we, you know, agreed to welcome two million refugees. It's of course, great. It's not actually about Poland if you understand Polish government as Poland. It's about third sector, NGOs. There are actually NGOs who were treated there as the enemy in Poland and will still be. It's short-term support. Long-term support, if it will happen, we don't know. Poland was the most anti-refugee country, and I would even say, society. Of course, there's a certain component of racism. If somebody comes from Syria will be treated very differently than somebody who comes from Ukraine.
There were a lot of mistakes of Poland before. We are also dependent partially on Russian resources. How can we expect and call Germany to stop Nord Stream 2 if we are importing Russian coal? Fortunately, the Polish government announced that we can stop it immediately if everybody else will stop it, but still even this sounds to me strange. Well, they say, the excuse is that it's a decision of the European Commission. The first time I heard from the Polish government that we can't do something is because we have to respect European Commission. What? Now we are respecting the European Commission. Since when?
And there is another process that I would like to emphasize. What is happening now and the fact that Poland is in the strategic position today can create a situation where the United States, and the EU as well, will accept certain, I would say soft authoritarianism here, will not push any more for the rule of law in Poland. And this would be the big mistake because, you know, we have a Putin because the West accepted what Putin was doing with the democracy. So I don't want to have any soft Putinism in Poland. I would like the West still pushing Poland to accept the rule of law. It's not that Poland has leverage or moral leverage because we accepted refugees. The EU and the States have also leverage because they defend us in potential confrontations with Russia. Use it, and help us, help the third sector, the NGOs in Poland because we are accepting and welcoming refugees, not really the government or not yet at least.
So this is what I would like to emphasize strongly concerning the cost of sanctions. Listen, this is the choice, either we accept people dying in Ukraine or we accept the fact that, you know, we will have for a certain time inflation. For me it's clear.
SR: I'll come to the refugee question in a moment, Slawek, but can you say something about what you understand to be the impact of the sanctions on Russian citizens, ordinary Russians?
SS: Yes. Well, listen, if you have 71% of people supporting the so-called “special operation”, if you have so much respect in Russian society to Putin, and so passive attitude towards what's happening in Russia, I would say that the 71% deserved what they're getting now. You know, in Poland, it's much harder to say that Poland means Polish government, but it's much easier to say the same about Russia. Of course, I sympathize with the Russian society. I mean, I'm a big fan of Russian culture. I'm going now to Vienna to meet Russian intellectuals and young Russians. And I never reject or refuse to talk to a Russian audience or to meet Russians. But I don't have a big problem in sanctioning Russia and Russian society. They will survive. They should do something with Putin as well. They are the first victims of Putin. They should understand it and accept this fact. And also, if this is the only option to change situation in Russia, we have to do it.
SR: Okay. Let me come to the point you made before about the influx of refugees and how the Polish government's attitude has changed completely, and also to some extent, the attitude of ordinary Polish citizens has also shifted once the refugees are Ukrainians, similar to themselves rather than refugees from faraway conflicts in Syria or Afghanistan. You wrote a sentence which has stuck in my mind: "Almost overnight, Poland has gone from being one of Europe's most homogeneous societies to hosting the world's fourth largest refugee population and the largest contingent of refugees anywhere in Europe." And this in the country like Hungary. Since 2015, the two countries which have opposed not only the influx of refugees into Europe, but have also been staunchly opposed to any kind of distribution of these refugees across the EU countries. The question is how long do you think this generosity and tolerance towards refugees is likely to last? And do you think there could be a backlash?
SS: It depends on certain factors. It depends on the financial support of the West because, you know, accepting two million people overnight would be hard even for Germany. The German government actually asked the Polish government to stop sending special transports or trains, additional trains from Warsaw to Berlin because they don't know how to administer it in Berlin. And we're talking about 100,000 or 200,000 of refugees in Germany. When we accept that 2 million, we have 1 million children from Ukraine, 100,000 are already learning in schools. So, we need support, financial support. It's extremely important here if we wanna avoid backlash. There was some anti-Ukrainian phobia in Polish society always because of the bloody history. There was so called narcissism of small differences which helped Russia and Germany before to somehow manage to push one country against another, smaller countries like Poland or Ukraine. So, it can come back because there are certain grounds for this.
We have already a million or a million-and-a-half immigrants. And so, they’ve lived here for the last years. They came after 2014 gradually. Young men, young women. They work. They work in Uber, in restaurants. There was no big problem with this, never. But they live next to Poles, not with Poles. So, I would say that the integration is pretty superficial. You still don't have a Ukrainian theater in Poland. You don't have anybody in the government dedicated to care about Ukrainian diaspora and you don't have any Ukrainian media that would be supported by the government. You don't have any real institutions for Ukrainians. There was kind of a unwritten agreement between the government and the opposition. The government is like, pretending as nothing happened and opposition is not starting any discussion because opposition is afraid of starting potential conflict, or initiating any potential conflict. So, it was happening somehow like quietly.
Now, this is why the Ukrainians will stay here. The majority will stay here because you have already Ukrainians here and also because the Polish and Ukrainian language is very similar, more similar than Russian and Ukrainian. Seventy percent of words are exactly the same in Ukrainian and Polish. And plus, morally, they will feel much better staying in Poland, being closer to Ukraine than staying in Germany. So, we will have sooner or later a 10% Ukrainian minority, which for Poles it's a shock and I can imagine backlash. I can even say that it's unavoidable because people are very spontaneous now. They are accepting refugees at their homes, but sooner or later it's gonna be problematic for people to live like, you know, one family next to another family when Poland has one of the smallest number of square meters per person in Europe. You don't have enough flats for Poles even and now you have additional two million Ukrainians. So this will cause a problem for sure.
SR: Let me ask you one last question, Slawek. Let's turn away from Poland back to the an-European scenario of which you have been a very good analyst. And that is, do you think the war in Ukraine might reconfigure this illiberal international or illiberal Pan-European Alliance of Far-Right Populists, and what I have called soft authorians in Europe? Do you think that the stigma of the association with Putin will be enough to discredit many of the far-right populist leaders or do you think that the war is likely to, on the one hand, discredit Putin's useful idiots, but, on the other hand, fuel support for the far-right because of the economic repercussions that the world will have all across Europe, in Eastern and Western Europe?
SS: You know, I live in Poland and for the last six years the Polish government did everything to be crushed in the elections, like corruption, nepotism, scandal after scandal. And nothing happened. They were winning one election after another. So, it's not easy to discredit populists. Look at Orban. Orban is getting higher and higher in the public polls. Also, because, you know, this is most basic mechanism that people are gathering around the leader when there was external danger. So I'm afraid that with economic repercussions, the general fear can help populists rather than eliminate them. What I can imagine is that if you will have certain democratization of Russia, you can have certain wave of democratization also in Europe, but it's ascience fiction scenario today. Maybe I'm too pessimistic, both concerning the refugee crisis in Poland and the future of populists in Europe. But, you know, living for six years in Poland makes you less optimistic than you thought you could be.
When you have a war somewhere close to your country and when you have an influx of people who were living in Ukraine, when the war is the reality, an everyday realityon your news channel, you're hearing or you're watching the soldiers in the war, or the victims of war every day, it makes Ukrainians much more militarized than the regular society and even more authoritarian. So, Poland probably will get more of this militarianism in Polish political culture and even can became a little bit more autocratic. Also look at Germany. You know, there will be much more money for the army. It's gonna happen everywhere. So, I would say that this factor can also work against democracy. The war, army, all of it will be in the center of politics today. I don't know how it will influence our democratic political culture.
SR: So, thank you, Slawek. Thank you very much for this analysis of both the repercussions of the war in Russia, in Ukraine, of course, but also in Poland and the EU. It was a pleasure having you with me today. Thanks for joining.
SS: Thank you very much, Shalini. It was a pleasure to talk to you.
SR: Let me wrap up by summarizing some of the main arguments and ideas that were in discussion today. The war in Ukraine did not start a month ago. Ukrainians have been fighting a defensive war against Russia since 2014, since the annexation of Crimea. The Ukrainian President Zelensky and the resistance of the Ukrainian people have shifted already the borders of our imagination about democracy in Europe. We will need to create a new architectural security in and for Europe. The possible scenarios that we could conceive of, could be four: a frozen war, a nuclear confrontation, a change in powers in Kremlin, and a face-saving compromise of Ukrainian neutrality. Which may sound a feasible or plausible option but given Russia's history or given Putin's history of flouting all treaties, this may not be a good scenario.
Putin seems to be counting on creating millions of Ukrainian refugees as part of his war effort. Western and European sanctions are unprecedented, but although there are more than what we expected, they may not be enough to change the Russian government. European dependency on oil and gas on Russia is what makes Europe structurally different from the U.S. because it is much more directly affected and is more directly dependent for its energy needs. We should still be less worried about the repercussions of the war in Europe. It's countries in Africa who will be hardest hit by the war in Ukraine, both in terms of their food needs but also in terms of energy supplies. We're already seeing, for example, the Sri Lankan economy on the brink of collapse due to the energy crisis. Acceptance of soft authoritarianism in Poland by the EU may be one of the paradoxical results of the war in Ukraine. Authoritarian populists, rulers like Orban may in the end strengthen their hold on their own populations.
This was the third episode of season 4 of "Democracy in Question." Thank you very much for listening. Join us also for the next episode in a fortnight when we will discuss the fate of the democracy movement in Myanmar. My guest will be Marzuki Darusman, a human rights and international law expert. Please go back and listen to any episode you may have missed. And of course, let your friends know about the podcast if you're enjoying it. You can stay in touch with the work of the CEU at www.ceu.edu. and the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy at www.graduateinstitute.ch/democracy.