Already a subscriber? Make sure to log into your account before viewing this content. You can access your account by hitting the “login” button on the top right corner. Still unable to see the content after signing in? Make sure your card on file is up-to-date.
The head of Poland’s foreign intelligence agency says Russia poses a real and immediate military threat to his country and is likely to keep ratcheting up the stakes the worse its war in Ukraine goes.
Getting into it: Speaking publicly to Polish outlets for the first time, Colonel Paweł Szota told the newspaper Rzeczpospolita that the Kremlin treats Poland and the rest of NATO’s eastern flank as roadblocks to its imperial ambitions. He warned that his agency is gaming out how Russia might try to provoke the Baltic states, one option being the so-called “little green men” (unmarked Russian troops without insignia), the same tactic Moscow used when it seized Crimea in 2014.
Szota described Vladimir Putin as a man trapped by his own failure in Ukraine, arguing he’ll sacrifice ordinary Russians’ quality of life, gut the economy, and choke off investment, all to end the war on terms he can spin as a win. He said the whole war has turned into a deep humiliation for Putin, whose spy services and military badly misjudged things by banking on a fast win, which is part of what makes his next moves so hard to predict. He added that Russia can keep fighting in Ukraine for several more years.
He also flagged concern over Belarus sliding deeper under Moscow’s control, pointing to construction there meant to handle systems that deliver nuclear weapons, the Oreshnik missile among them, plus nuclear drills the two countries are running together. At the same time, he said Polish intelligence keeps its own lines open to Minsk, even as Ukraine recently accused Belarus of letting relay gear sit on its soil to help steer Russian drone strikes.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also echoed this, warning that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has one week to dismantle the relay stations before Ukraine takes military action.
It should be noted that the Russian government has consistently denied harboring any territorial ambitions toward Poland or NATO more broadly, with Putin himself repeatedly dismissing the idea of attacking the alliance as “nonsense.” He’s argued Russia has no geopolitical, economic, or military reason to fight NATO countries, and Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has waved off warnings from Western leaders as fearmongering, insisting Putin has no intention of restoring the old Soviet Union.
That said, the messaging hasn’t exactly been clean. Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president now serving as deputy chairman of the country’s Security Council, has occasionally floated the idea of pushing the war all the way to Poland’s borders, branding Poland a “historical enemy” and warning that Polish actions could drag Warsaw into a direct confrontation with Russia and Belarus.
