Wojciech Przybylski: It’s a Battle for Hearts and Minds in the West

Wojciech Przybylski

Against the background of the Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement of the secession of the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories to Russia and the successful offensive actions of the defenders of Ukraine at the front, Kyiv made two high-profile decisions almost simultaneously. It is about officially sending Ukraine’s application for NATO membership to Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Volodymyr Zelenskyi’s approval of the NSDC’s decision on the impossibility of any negotiations with Vladimir Putin. Are such steps correct, and is there hope for success? Newssky asked Wojciech Przybylski, a political analyst who heads the political forecasting of the Visegrad Group regarding European affairs to comment.

Yes, I think both decisions are correct. However, the second one looks controversial at first glance to the Western public opinion. This puts Ukrainian effort at risk because the mood among the public opinion and political elites in the West always includes room for negotiations. The decision of the Ukrainian president therefore needs continuous effort of explaining why it is impossible to negotiate with a terrorist state. And we should mind that officially Russia has not yet been recognized as a terrorist state and is unlikely to be considered a terrorist state by any US administration despite obvious evidence. Therefore, the main objective here is the battle for the hearts and minds of the public opinion in the Western countries so that they understand why negotiations with de facto terrorists are counter-productive.

How did the promotion to NATO take place in Poland, what was the most difficult, and how did you cope with it?

Poland did not have any issue with joining NATO income so the public opinion. The only misperception the public opinion has displayed earlier was to what extent NATO is going to confirm its willingness to protect Poland. Especially in the first years, while the allies were not deploying troops on the ground for the new member states. The main diplomatic and defense policy efforts were therefore to ensure Allied presence on the grounds in Poland to confirm commitment of partners to defend our territory. I believe this is the same case for Ukraine, in which NATO is an important step and milestone. But the real goal in the objective is to ensure that Ukraine would have a small but meaningful military presence of allied countries on its territory in the future that would deter the appetite of an aggressor to attack.

Wojciech Przybylski is a political analyst heading Visegrád Insight’s policy foresight on European affairs. His expertise includes foreign policy and political culture. Editor-in-Chief of Visegrád Insight and President of the Res Publica Foundation. Europe’s Future Fellow at IWM—Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna and Erste Foundation. Wojciech also co-authored a book ‘Understanding Central Europe, Routledge 2017. He has been published in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, Journal of Democracy, EUObserver, Project Syndicate, VoxEurop, Hospodarske noviny, Internazionale, Zeit, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, Onet, Gazeta Wyborcza. And regularly appears in BBC, Al Jazeera Europe, Euronews, TRT World, TVN24, TOK FM, Swedish Radio and others. @visegradinsight

Maryna Kovalchuk, Newssky, contributed