Can Poland Defend Itself From Invading Illegal Immigrants Without Worsening Tensions With Russia?

Poles are outraged after an invading illegal immigrant stabbed a Polish border guard last week, who’s now fighting for their life, with a growing number demanding that lethal force finally be used. The prior conservative-nationalist government eschewed this tactic, likely due to fears of Western condemnation and sanctions, so it’s improbable that their liberal-globalist successors would do this. That said, it’s still a welcome sign that they’ll reimpose an “exclusion zone” on the border, but it mustn’t be exploited.

It was already explained back in late 2021 that “Poland’s Eastern Migrant Crisis Has a Psychological Effect on Its Population”, many of whom are conservative and fear being demographically replaced by civilizationally dissimilar illegal immigrants like what’s presently taking place in Western Europe. Furthermore, they also rightly fear that this invasion will lead to an explosion in crime, once again exactly as is already occurring in Western Europe. Society is therefore largely united on this sensitive issue.

Exceptions of course exist, such as Polish director Agnieszka Holland whose “Green Border” film last year maligned the Polish border guards by misportraying them as violent savages while presenting the illegal immigrants on the Belarusian border as only being peaceful families fleeing war. New Sejm Speaker Szymon Holownia also posed with an illegal immigrant invader in the parliamentary chambers late last year in a sign of the new liberal-globalist coalition government’s friendly attitude towards this group.

Nevertheless, that same government just agreed to reimpose their hated predecessor’s “exclusion zone” under public pressure after the latest stabbing, which comes just before the upcoming European Parliamentary elections that they want their candidates to win. Returning Prime Minister Donald Tusk also had his country vote against the EU’s migration pact, but Poles have plenty of reasons to distrust his commitment to not accept any civilizationally dissimilar illegal immigrants as was explained here.

As regards the latest measure, it occurred shortly after his government announced their border fortification buildup, which is predicated on the false pretext that Russia might one day spark World War III by invading NATO member Poland. Therein lies the worries that last week’s stabbing might be exploited to further justify the aforementioned buildup despite it having nothing to do with defending against illegal immigrant invaders.

Truth be told, all that Poland has to do to resolve this crisis is resort to lethal force instead of relying on the shields and spray that its border guards used in this video here from last week to rebuff a recent invasion, with the death of just several weapon-wielding illegal immigrants being enough to deter most of the rest. That won’t happen though since Tusk wouldn’t dare provoke his European patrons’ wrath, but he could still at least order the use of rubber bullets for disarming the most threatening invaders.

Instead, he’s much more likely to double down on his planned border fortification buildup and reaffirm his country’s claims from the past government into the present one that Russia is weaponizing illegal immigrants against Poland. This presupposes that Russia and Belarus aren’t sincerely interested in expanding ties with the Global South by easing their visa procedures for nationals from those countries but that they promulgated this policy solely to encourage illegal immigration to Poland.

While there’s logic to the theory that Russia might approve of this as an asymmetrical form of warfare against that hostile country, the fact of the matter is that its respective policy was sincerely promulgated to expand ties with the Global South. Belarus’ was too, but it also arguably decided to let some of these people illegally cross the border into Poland in order to punish its neighbor for supporting 2020’s failed Color Revolution and continuing to host anti-government militants that still threaten it.

While there’s logic to the theory that Russia might approve of this as an asymmetrical form of warfare against that hostile country, the fact of the matter is that its respective policy was sincerely promulgated to expand ties with the Global South

Contrary to what the Western public imagines, Belarus isn’t a Russian puppet state, and Minsk has a history of acting independently of Moscow on many sensitive issues. It might therefore reject any theoretical Russian requests to stop illegal immigration into Poland since its interests are advanced by keeping this asymmetrical warfare policy in place. Even so, Poland can defend itself from these threats by using lethal force to deter the invading illegal immigrants, it doesn’t need more border fortifications.

Considering Poland’s leading role in waging NATO’s proxy war on Russia through Ukraine, and bearing in mind how it’s now countenancing a conventional intervention there, Tusk will certainly not let this latest crisis go to waste by declining to exploit it for fearmongering against Russia. Observers can therefore expect more Russia-bashing from his government on this pretext and others as Poland ramps up the hysteria at home ahead of what might very well be an intervention in Ukraine sometime this summer.

Dr Andrew Korybko is a Political Analyst and a Contributor to the Sixteenth Council Insights