Poland: Sikorski wants to throw Ukrainian refugees into the meat grinder

We are now in the third year of the war in Ukraine. The success of the Russian army’s advance on Pokrovsk and the meagre effect of the Ukrainian offensive in Kursk Oblast have filled the ‘statesmen’ of western capitalism with trepidation. ‘This is not how it was supposed to be, Friends!’ resounds in Washington and Kiev.

The Ukrainian ruling class faces a critical situation. Ukraine is facing certain defeat. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have died, half the country has been ruined, and morale is at rock bottom. Millions who fled the hell of war, contrary to expectations, have not returned home. This presents a problem for Ukraine and its western backers in this war: they cannot get their hands on enough men to feed the meat grinder.

As a result, the ruling class is taking ever more desperate steps. The Ukrainian government has started forcibly conscripting men of 25 years of age and above into the army.

What contribution has Poland made to this? There is now talk that our government will actively support this barbaric conscription campaign, gleefully handing people over to die in the trenches.

Desperate times

Who is Radoslaw Sikorski? The current Polish foreign minister is a graduate of Oxford University. While studying there, he was a member of the elite Bullingdon club, known for gathering the cream of the young ruling elite, including former British Conservative Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and David Cameron. He has been a lifelong supporter of all manner of criminal ventures of western imperialism, from being an honorary member of the Mujahideen(!) to his more recent enthusiastic support and aid for the slaughter in Gaza.

He was also the one who announced in July this year that next year there will be an increase in Polish ‘defence’ spending – already the highest in Europe – to as much as 5 percent of GDP! This means that Poland allocates more than $41 billion in its annual budget for the development of the army. Poland has seen the fastest increase in military expenditure in Europe, and already has the third largest army in the EU. Over the last decade, military expenditure has increased by 181 percent.

Poland has seen the fastest increase in military expenditure in Europe / Image: Gov.pl, Wikimedia Commons

The increase in military expenditure is all the more outrageous in view of the fact that millions of people in Poland are currently suffering from floods that have caused billions in damage. The ruling class is not willing to rethink the scale of its military spending, even in view of the deplorable state of education, healthcare and social housing.

Not content with turning Poland ever more into an armed outpost of western imperialism, Sikorski wants Poland to act as its press gang, forcing Ukrainians back to fight and die for the interests of the West. “A Ukrainian barber cuts my hair in Warsaw,” the charming Sikorski recently remarked, “I ask him, shouldn’t you be defending Ukraine?”

Sikorski has some simple tricks up his sleeve to encourage refugees to move to the front. Displacement by starvation and the threat of coercion.

During Mr Zelensky’s visit to Warsaw in July, he pompously announced the formation of the ‘Ukrainian Legion’ – a voluntary formation based on Ukrainians living in Poland. The plan was simple: the Ukrainian side is responsible for recruitment and the Polish State will equip, train and lend the necessary infrastructure.

The plan had a very significant incentive: its contracts clearly specify the length of service and the date when the recruits will be returned to Poland. There are no such legal protections for the unfortunate conscripts of the Ukrainian armed forces.

But whilst on 11 July Sikorski spoke at the NATO Public Forum in Washington to trumpet the several thousand Ukrainians who had registered for the Legion, the fact was that this was only several thousand information enquiries. These are not recruits, and to this day, this unit has not been formed.

But for those who refused the ‘kind’ offer of volunteering under inducements, there are also behind the scenes discussions of forcibly deporting Ukrainian citizens in violation of the most basic human rights.

The Ukrainian government has already tried to force refugees to return to the country. In May this year, it was announced that any male aged 18 to 60 who wishes to apply for a passport or renewal must do so from within Ukraine. Of course, those who find themselves in Ukraine for passport purposes are often forcibly conscripted into the army and sent to the slaughter.

But, unsatisfied with the carnage so far, Radoslaw Sikorski is calling for the abolition of social benefits across Europe for Ukrainian refugees. The plan is simple – starve, alienate and exclude the Ukrainian masses back to the battlefield.

Such a decision, dictated by political interests, would see the 4 million Ukrainian refugees in the EU condemned to a sudden worsening of their living conditions, which are already often worse than those of the rest of the region's population. To cite just one figure: Ukrainian women make up half of those forced into prostitution in Berlin’s brothels.

This is the real face of the smiling, European government of Poland. The current head of the Ministry of Defence expressed how little human life means to the ruling class:

“This is the duty of every citizen in a country […] the citizens of Ukraine have duties to the state […] We have been suggesting for a long time that we are also in a position to help the Ukrainian side to make sure that those who are under the obligation of military service go to Ukraine.”

The cynicism of the ruling class

This approach to Ukrainian refugees is a dramatic change from the beginning of the war. We all remember how, in 2022, broad sections of society threw themselves into helping the refugees. The government of the day quickly introduced laws on free transport and accommodation and other assistance for refugees. Even the Polish capitalists, albeit cynically, set up all sorts of collections and relief operations. As a result, of the 3 million Ukrainians fleeing the war, 950,000 of them settled in Poland.

The ‘generosity’ of the Polish government did not last forever / Image: EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid, Flickr

Was the ruling class doing all this out of sheer empathy? Of course not. The same ruling class which treats refugees from outside of Europe as though they are less than vermin wished to put on a hypocritical mask of ‘humanitarianism’. And, naturally, Ukrainian refugees were a welcome source of cheap labour.

The war in Ukraine coincides with a period which, for Poland, was the beginning of a labour shortage crisis, linked to the low fertility rate (one of the lowest in Europe), and a high percentage of emigration of young labour to western countries. 

In this difficult period, the war caused a sudden influx of a million potential labourers without definite prospects for their future. Such a desperate mass of people was an easy target for exploitation by the Polish capitalists. Poland's labour shortage crisis has been temporarily averted by the exploitation of these refugees, most often employed in the worst conditions, at or below the minimum wage.

But the ‘generosity’ of the Polish government did not last forever, and most of the concessions and facilities for refugees have been – or are in the process of being – abolished, first by the previous government and now by the current one. The cynicism and contempt of the ruling class is independent of which political party represents it.

Eventually, the fanfares welcoming refugees fell silent. War on our eastern border became a grey, dull, everyday reality for the average Pole. Gradually, with Ukraine's successive military setbacks, a campaign began to take shape demanding that male refugees should start returning to their homeland. Now Ukraine is running out of manpower, these same suffering masses that were once welcomed are regarded as having greater utility as cannon fodder.

Just a month after the war broke out in 2022, we predicted: “As night follows day, the ruling classes of Europe will throw Ukrainian migrants under the bus when their purpose has been served.” How tragically accurate that prediction proved to be.

In sending war refugees back to the front, the ruling class are reminding us of how easily they would dispose of our lives if they were called upon to do so. For them, maintaining power and their assets will always be more important than the life of a worker, no matter his nationality.

The future of Ukrainian refugees

Of course, cutting off social support will not hit all Ukrainian refugees with the same force. The victims of this move will mainly be workers, single-parent families, the isolated, and those at risk of poverty. The majority will be women and children, including those who fled the war as children but who have now reached the age of 18, entitling them to join the Ukrainian armed forces.

Cutting off social support will not hit all Ukrainian refugees with the same force / Image: Pakkin Leung, Wikimedia Commons

For members of the Ukrainian nomenklatura and bourgeoisie, this will be nothing more than a minor inconvenience. Just as in 2022, the capitalists and their rich hangers-ons will live like ‘doughnuts in butter’, as the Polish saying goes, while workers and their children die in the trenches of the Ukrainian steppes.

There are frequent news reports of the children of Ukrainian politicians and the upper class simply buying their way out of military service through their political influence or money, while in the streets of Ukrainian cities there are round-ups of men of conscript age who, under threat of court martial, are forced to fight and die at the front.

The Ukrainian capitalists, many of whom have now settled in Poland, continue to issue the most patriotic and fiery calls for the continuation of the war at any cost. They were the first to flee their country and are likely to be the last to return. The war has not depleted their wealth but will have enriched them enormously. They organise many collections for the continuation of the war, but they themselves will not be sending their own children to the front to die any time soon.

In war, the ruling classes always place themselves above the law. Ultimately, the fighting and the economic burden of any armed conflict always falls to the proletariat.

It is worth noting that, if this proposal were to go ahead, the exodus of Ukrainian workers from EU countries will not be without impact on an economy dependent on cheap, desperate labour. The dilemma that may divide the ruling class is as follows: do we risk the current economic situation for the sake of a future division of the spoils, or do we cut our losses and walk away from the table?

Down with the warmongers!

No matter how many lives Mr Sikorski and his gang throw at the mill, however, they will not be able to influence the overall outcome of the war. Ukraine is headed to a crushing defeat: the only question is, when? Even if peace is achieved, it will be a precarious and shaky peace. It will be a peace achieved not through a mutual desire to end barbaric bloodshed, but through a cynical calculus of what pays off for the interests of the ruling classes of either side, and not the rest of humanity. In a word, peace will only be an opportunity to catch one’s breath and regenerate the armies of the international imperialists before even greater wars.

The only permanent solution to end these wars will come by ousting the possessing classes, that class of parasites that benefits from and propagates war, from power. That is the task of the organised proletariat.

Only by abolishing the imperialist capitalist system will peace have the possibility of having any permanence. We say:

No deportations to feed the imperialist war machine!

No trust in the capitalist clique!

Class struggle not national struggle!

The working class must bring the warmongers to justice!