POLISH MILITARY DIPLOMACY CONCERNING UKRAINE IN 2022-2024: BETWEEN CENTRISM AND PERIPHERALITY OF DIRECTION

Abstract

The article is devoted to a comprehensive study of the approaches, principles, and measures of the political and military leadership of the Republic of Poland in the field of military diplomacy, the importance of which increased in 2022-2024, when the Russian Federation carried out a large-scale invasion of Ukraine, which changed the hybrid war into a modern total war. The research methodology is based on objectivity and historicism, within which the principles of generalization, analysis and synthesis, statistical method, as well as retrospective and systemic approaches were applied. The article for the first time comprehensively reflects the main practical approaches and decisions of Polish political, diplomatic, and military leaders against the background of geopolitical, geo-economic, and socio-cultural processes in Eastern Europe at the present stage. Having understood the Russian threat, the Polish political leadership chose the path of resistance in the diplomatic, military, and economic spheres. The diplomacy of official Warsaw operated within the framework of Polish strategic interests, the intentions of leading NATO countries in Central Europe, and Ukrainian national interests.  It has been determined that as a result of the influence of the alliance, represented by Washington and Berlin, which is based on an unnatural reaction to the Russian information attack on the use of nuclear weapons and refusal to openly confront the axis of evil (Russia, North Korea, Iran and its proxy, China), Polish politicians are gradually avoiding placing the Ukrainian case in the center of security structures, leaning towards classifying it as peripheral. This change in the approaches of the Polish leadership is caused by the demands of the allies, who fear the transformation of the Russo-Ukrainian War from a local one to a regional one.