Poland warns European allies against peace deals made without Eastern Europe

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski warned Western European allies on Thursday against negotiating an end to Russia's war in Ukraine without accounting for Eastern Europe's security interests, Euronews reported. Sikorski told journalists in Warsaw that Western Europe must not deal with Russia over the heads of East Europeans, adding that Eastern Europe and Scandinavia cannot be left out of the conversation. Poland is also pushing back against efforts to resume Russian gas imports, Euronews said. [1]

The warning comes as US President Donald Trump predicted a very big deal with Russia involving Ukraine and all of Europe, according to thejournal.ie, rte.ie, and Arab News. Thejournal.ie and rte.ie reported that Trump made the comments after meeting Russian leader Vladimir Putin's envoy at the White House. Arab News and rte.ie noted that the US president's wife hosted Russian and Ukrainian officials at the White House prior to the statements. [3][6][7]

In a separate development, Polish authorities announced on Thursday that they had arrested six people involved in shipping military components to Russia, DW reported. Four of the suspects, including a Russian woman, were charged with espionage and placed in three months of pretrial detention, according to DW. Investigators said the group illegally supplied Moscow with significant quantities of parts used to make weapons systems and ammunition despite an embargo. [2][4][5]

Poland is a Central European country bordering Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, and is the fifth most populous member state of the European Union, according to Wikipedia. The subregion of Eastern Europe historically experienced post-World War II subjugation under Soviet control, as Grokipedia details, until the collapse of communist regimes and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. [9][10][12]