MINSK, April 4. /TASS/. The Polish authorities haven't given up on the idea of gaining control over western Ukraine if Kiev’s military is defeated, Director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Sergey Naryshkin said after a meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
"Gaining control over the western territories of modern Ukraine, over the so-called former Eastern Borderlands, has been a long-cherished dream of Polish nationalists. And this has become an element of the national ideology, as the Polish authorities cannot let go of this idea. The Polish government believes that this could become a reality if the Ukrainian state collapses as a result of a military defeat," the Russian intelligence chief said.
He explained that this was exactly why Warsaw opposed the peaceful settlement of the conflict and promised to make sure that it would continue to support Ukrainian authorities. "This situation exacerbates the position of Ukraine and its people. I’d say that the Polish authorities are literally waiting to swoop in and seize control over these territories," Naryshkin said.
Earlier, the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Second CIS Department, Alexey Polishchuk, told TASS in an interview that since the start of Russia’s special military operation, Warsaw had started to more actively explore western Ukrainian lands, implementing a range of political and military measures. He paid attention to the fact that Polish nationalist circles continued to hold onto imperial ambitions and dreamt of returning the so-called historical Eastern Borderlands. Polishchuk also pointed out that no matter who has been in power in Poland since the early 1990s, Poland’s cultural and economic expansion in Ukraine has not stopped, and since 2014 this has taken on a military and political dimension.