Paweł Jabłoński was asked in a media interview if Russia could be tempted to take advantage of the Beijing Olympics to intensify its aggressive posture and start a regular war with Ukraine.
The Polish deputy foreign minister said: “Such a risk definitely exists. Russia has never minded such a thing. In 2008, virtually on the day the Summer Olympics started, in Beijing incidentally, Russia attacked Georgia.”
Asked if a repeat was on the cards, Jabłoński said: “I can’t reveal all the knowledge we have on this subject, but I can say one thing: Europe hasn’t been threatened with a conflict on this scale in decades.”
'Russia is an unpredictable actor'
Jabłoński was also asked in the interview if Polish diplomats would be trying to arrange a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the Beijing Olympics.
Poland’s head of state, Andrzej Duda, was attending the Olympic Games in the Chinese capital at the same time as the Russian leader.
Jabłoński replied: “Such a meeting has not been scheduled during these Olympic Games, but this doesn’t mean we are ruling out talks with Russia.”
He noted that Poland’s top diplomat, Zbigniew Rau, would meet with his Russian opposite number, Sergei Lavrov, later this month.
Rau is currently Chairperson-in-Office of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), whose participating states include both Ukraine and Russia.
Jabłoński said: “We have to realise that although Russia is an unpredictable actor in international affairs, breaking its word and breaking international law, it remains a party with whom we must talk.”
‘Putin wants a return to the past’
Jabłoński also referred to recent remarks by the Russian president, who said, when hosting Hungarian leader Viktor Orban in Moscow, that NATO’s enlargement to include countries such as Poland “was a deceit for Russia,” the PAP news agency reported.
“Vladimir Putin would definitely want to live in a world as it was not only before NATO’s enlargement of 1997, but before 1989, or 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed,” Jabłoński said in the interview.
He added that the Russian leader "would like Russia to decide whether Ukraine, Poland or other central European states can be NATO members.”
“This is precisely a contravention of international law,” Jabłoński said. “Sovereign states decide their future themselves.”
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP