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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Comment
Anna Gromada and Krzysztof Zeniuk

Why Poland may have most to gain from a Russian defeat in Ukraine

Poles and Ukrainian refugees march together holding a huge Polish flag in Gdansk on 6 November.
Ukrainian refugees with a Polish flag in Gdańsk, Poland, 6 November 2022. Photograph: Agnieszka Pazdykiewicz/Sopa Images/Rex/Shutterstock

If the outcome of the war could be determined by the toss of a coin, the camps would be clear: democracies would want Ukraine to win, autocracies would want it to lose. But real-world political outcomes are not so binary. They typically fall on a spectrum between annihilation and total victory. This leaves the democracies divided into at least three camps: the English-speaking, the western European and the eastern European minus Hungary. What Putin calls the “collective west” all want Ukraine to win. But not necessarily to the same extent.

For Poland and the Baltic countries the matter is simple. They want Ukraine’s victory to be unequivocal. The advantages would be both material and psychological.

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