It will be interesting to see what the “Commission to Investigate Russian Influences on the Internal Security of the Republic of Poland from 2007 to 2022” actually intends to say against Donald Tusk, once it has been convened. After all, Tusk is the main objective of the law that is intended to set up the commission. The ruling Law and Justice party, PiS, explains this quite openly.
Donald Tusk, leader of the largest opposition party Civic Platform (PO), was Prime Minister of Poland from 2007 to 2014, after which he went to Brussels and became President of the EU Council. In the rhetoric of the current governing party, this former office makes him an extended arm of the EU Commission, which from the PiS point of view is controlled by France, but above all by Germany, and is about as imperialistic as Russia. According to the PiS, Tusk is a German friend and a Russian agent.
Tusk belongs in prison, and not only from Kaczyński’s point of view
In the PiS logic, he is, if only because he left the investigations after the Smolensk plane crash in 2010, in which then President Lech Kaczyński was killed, to Russia. Lech’s twin brother, today’s PiS chairman Jarosław, still maintains that the plane crash was caused intentionally – although Polish investigators found no evidence of this either.
Donald Tusk belongs in prison, and not only from Kaczyński’s point of view. Tusk must be held accountable for being “one of Putin’s most loyal allies,” Deputy Agriculture Minister Janusz Kowalski told state broadcaster TV Polska in April. After all, Tusk fed Gazprom and the Kremlin with one billion złoty, the equivalent of 222 million euros, during his reign.
In the spring, ten percent of Polish oil came from Russia
In fact, during his tenure, Tusk rejected the Nord Stream project with similar vehemence as his PiS successors. And the Tusk government – like the PiS governments later – imported oil, gas and coal from Russia. However, after the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, Tusk shut down Russian coal imports. This April, the Warsaw District Prosecutor’s Office launched a case against Tusk for precisely that reason. He intervened in import contracts and exceeded his powers as Prime Minister. The PiS triumphed, every charge against Tusk suits them – even if Tusk only did what the PiS always demands.
In the spring, the environmental organization Greenpeace announced that Poland is still getting up to ten percent of its oil requirements from Russia, a year after the start of the war in Ukraine. In addition, LPG will continue to be purchased from Russia – Poland is the European leader in cars with this type of drive. Otherwise, however, Poland has stopped all imports since the Russian attack on Ukraine, and the country had been preparing for independence from Russian energy sources for some time. The Baltic Pipe, through which Poland obtains Norwegian natural gas, was opened in September. It’s a project that dates back to the 1990s but was completed under the PiS government.