Positive chemistry between Russia and Poland at a World War II remembrance event on Tuesday (1 September) could open a new chapter of realpolitik in bilateral ties, with implications for Poland's place in the EU.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Polish leader Donald Tusk on Tuesday morning spent 30 minutes chatting in a friendly manner in view of cameras on a pier in the Polish town of Sopot on the Baltic Sea coast.
The meeting - the first of its type in eight years - stood out next to ceremonies commemorating the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II in nearby Westerplatte, where around 20 European leaders gathered to pay respects. Mr Putin in an open letter in Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza the same day held out the prospect of putting Russian-Polish relations on the same privileged footing as Russian-German ties. "The Russian-German partnership has become an example of reaching out to one another, of looking to the future while paying attention to past memories ...I am sure that Russian-Polish relations will sooner or later attain the same level," he wrote.
The Russian premier offered to open national archives on the Katyn massacre, where Russian soldiers in 1940 killed 21,768 Polish officers and intellectuals being held as prisoners of war. He also signed an agreement giving Polish ships passage to Polish waters - the Zalew Wislany - through a Russian-controlled gap in a Baltic Sea promontory.
For their part, Polish politicians avoided any Russia-critical remarks. Even the nationalistic Polish President, Lech Kaczynski, restrained himself to a muted allusion to Russia's 2008 partition of Georgia, saying that infringements of territorial integrity are "wrong also today." "Russia and Poland have a perspective of working together as partners, of building relations appropriate to two great European nations," Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski said. "This [Mr Putin's letter] is the kind language that one partner should use with another."
Euobserver
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