The Prime Minister of Poland has warned that “Europe and the free world” have to stop Russian president Vladimir Putin, urging the European Union to impose strong sanctions.
“We must immediately respond to Russia’s criminal aggression on Ukraine,” wrote Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, of the national conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS), on social media.
“Europe and the free world had to stop Putin. Today’s European Council should approve the fiercest possible sanctions,” he said, referencing one of the European Union’s primary leadership bodies, before adding: “Our support for Ukraine must be real.”
Prime Minister Morawiecki’s statement follows Russia’s President Vladimir Putin having launched what he describes as a “special military operation… to de-militarise and de-Nazify Ukraine,” which has reportedly seen military strikes not just in the disputed Donbas region but against targets as far afield as Kyiv (Kiev), Kharkiv (Kharkov), and Odesa (Odessa).
Poland, which was an unhappy satellite of the Russian-dominated Soviet Union until the end of the Cold War and shares a border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, has activated Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty, along with fellow NATO members Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Article 4 requires NATO members to “consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.”
Remarking on the move, Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas insisted that “Russia’s widespread aggression is a threat to the entire world and to all NATO countries, and NATO consultations on strengthening the security of the Allies must be initiated to implement additional measures for ensuring the defence of NATO Allies.”
Article 4 of the NATO treaty is somewhat less serious than the more famous Article 5, which stipulates that “an armed attack against one or more [NATO members] in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all”.