Spat over Patriot missiles reveals deepening rifts over Ukraine

BRUSSELS>> A bitter political and diplomatic rift between Germany and Poland, important members of the European Union and NATO, has worsened as Russia’s war in Ukraine has ground on, undermining cohesion and solidarity in both organizations.

The toxic nature of the relationship was underscored recently by a German offer to provide two batteries of scarce and expensive Patriot air defense missiles to Poland,

after a Ukrainian missile strayed off course and killed two Poles last month in the little town of Przewodow.

Poland initially accepted the offer of the Patriots, then rejected it. It then insisted that the batteries be put in Ukraine, a nonstarter for NATO. After considerable allied concern and public criticism, the Poles now seem to have accepted the missiles again.

“This whole story is like an X- ray of miserable Polish- German relations,” said Michal Baranowski, the regional managing director of the German Marshall Fund in Warsaw. “It’s worse than I thought, and I’ve watched it a long time.”

Poland has long been wary of Germany; Hitler’s invasion in 1939 was the start of World War II. It was also critical of Germany’s policy of Ostpolitik, the Cold War effort at rapprochement with Moscow and the countries of Eastern and Central Europe occupied by the Soviet Union.

Democratic Poland consistently criticized German dependency on Russian energy and the two Nord

Stream pipelines that were designed to take cheap Russian gas directly to Germany and bypass Poland and Ukraine. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has only intensified the view in Poland that Germany’s close relations with Russia and President Vladimir Putin were not just naive but selfish and, possibly, just on hold rather than permanently sundered.

Both sides have made mistakes in the current dispute, said Jana Puglierin, the Berlin director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “The relationship has been deteriorating for years, but it’s peaking now and doing real damage,” she said. “There is a gap emerging between Europe’s east and west, old Europe and new Europe, and that’s beneficial only for Vladimir Putin.”

Germany thought this gesture of military help would be “an offer that was too good to be refused,” and would help convince Poles that Germany is a reliable ally, said a senior German diplomat, who would speak only anonymously in accordance with diplomatic practice.