Euro Times

The Ukraine War is starting to rapidly reshape the old continent

Apologies for the silence but it has been busy and on top of that I travelled to Europe for a few weeks, business and family things. All good. After a few stops in The Netherlands and Germany I am now in Poland, in the beautiful and lively city of Kraków to be more precise.

It is hard to come up with an encompassing ‘Euro Mood’ or indicator of the local sentiments about the war in Ukraine, but suffice it to say that it is getting a lot more attention here in Poland than in other countries. In Western Europe the concerns over airport delays with the summer holidays coming up are of course far more acute, as is the cost of living, notably gas prices. It is almost surreal to note how Ukraine has faded as a news item at a time when the stakes are getting increasingly higher. Both sides in the war are recording losses and successes and neither is even close to considering peace talks, concessions or some sort of settlement. Henry Kissinger’s recent suggestion that Ukraine should trade some land for a longer term peace deal has been wiped off the table as irrelevant as the battlefield momentum informs Ukraine to keep going. Well, Russia keeps going too and with an alarming intensity, making no distinction between military and civilian targets. It has become a war of total destruction, something many predicted would happen the moment that President Zelensky’s forces started to get some traction. With the delivery of ever more sophisticated weaponry to the embattled nation, Putin may feel the pressure to hurry things up before the tide really turns against him. Kissinger’s call may well be an unpopular one, it may also be interpreted as pointing to the last train stop: ‘we can get off here if we want, from here on things will spiral out of control’. This pessimistic take was further reinforced by the Economist this week pointing to the new nuclear dynamics that this conflict has unleashed with worldwide implications. In short: wherever one is on the planet, this should be non-stop front page news.

It is hard for me to give you a very precise reading, but being here and diving into Poland’s history you cannot help and grasp what is at stake in Eastern Europe. It is very different from sitting at your desk in Vancouver. The Poles have seen it before and the refugees keep coming into town, the photo above shows some emergency shelter and facilities just outside the Kraków railway station. The entire region has steadily recovered over the past thirty years after some ill fated back-to-back encounters with imperialism, fascism and communism. You can feel the positive vibe here, a country regaining its footing, building, and by the looks of the young people: enjoying it. No one is going to give that up and even Western Europe is re-asserting itself with unprecedented increases in defense spending. The map is being redrawn and we are in for a very long and increasingly violent conflict.

More updates in the days ahead. Stay tuned.