Poland’s foreign minister urges the Russian people to “drive assassins and thieves from power”

Poland has given Ukraine about 8.4 billion euros in military aid over the past two years to help it in its war with Russia, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on Thursday, calling on the Russian people to push for a power change in Moscow. .

Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Poland has offered Kiev a total of 44 military aid packages, the Polish minister said in a speech in the Warsaw parliament on Poland’s foreign policy objectives, DPA reports. EFE and Agerpres.

Poland thus supplied Ukraine with about 300 tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, 14 MiG-29 fighter jets, plus helicopters, air defense systems, according to military experts.

In addition, the Polish governments, namely the current government led by pro-EU liberal Donald Tusk and the previous conservative government, spent around 16 billion euros on humanitarian aid to Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees, around 950,000 of whom received an identification number in Poland temporary staff, meaning a protection status that facilitates their relations with the authorities and access to the Polish health system, the Polish minister also said, adding that in reality the number of Ukrainian refugees in Poland could be much higher.

“We have a simple alternative in front of us…”

Radoslaw Sikorski called on the West to decisively support Ukraine in the war with Russia. “We have a simple alternative in front of us: we could face a defeated Russian army stationed on the eastern border of Ukraine or a victorious one on the eastern border of Poland,” he believes.

But much of his speech consisted of messages to Russia, telling it not to attack NATO, because it will fail because this alliance has “three times more soldiers than Russia, a GDP 20 times higher, a population six times larger (…) and democratic values”.

Minister Sikorski also addressed the Russian people, asking them to act to end the war and “drive the murderers and thieves out of power”, claiming that Poland had done so, an allusion to the change in power after the conservative Lege and Justice (PiS) lost government after the legislative elections at the end of last year.

Radoslaw Sikorski was also foreign minister between 2007-2014, in the previous governments led by Donald Tusk. In 2014 he was involved in a political scandal caused by the publication in the press of some compromising extracts from the discussions held by several politicians and businessmen in restaurants, where they were secretly recorded by the waiters at the request of a man Business. In one of these private discussions, Sikorski qualified Poland’s alliance with the USA as “bullshit” that “makes no difference”.

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