A warming in the East?

Poland's Foreign Minister, Radosław Sikorski, met with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, in Moscow last week. The official aim of the visit was to prepare the groundwork for Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk's visit to Moscow on February 8. The main topics under discussion included the US missile shield, Russian bans on some Polish food exports, the proposed Nord Stream pipeline and a future EU-Russia partnership agreement.

Foreign Minister Lavrov assured Sikorski that Russia would not pressure Poland regarding the decision.

"We are not going to exert pressure on anyone. We want our concerns to be understood," Lavrov said during a press conference after the talks. He also added that Russia, "understands that Poland will make a decision based on its own security interests."

"This is only soft rhetoric from the Foreign Minister," said Grzegorz Kostrzewa-Zorbas, a political analyst who, after the fall of communism, headed negotiations on the withdrawal of the Russian army from Poland. "We need to wait for a statement on this topic from [Russian President] Putin or from Russia's next president [to be elected in March this year]," he added.

However, "we can see a large improvement in Poland's foreign policy," said Zbigniew Pisarski, the president of the Casimir Pulaski Foundation NGO. "Before the visit, Russia tried to intimidate Poland with nuclear weapons. But they did not manage and finally agreed that the decision about the shield belongs to Poland," he told WBJ.

"We are returning to normality," said Sikorski in Moscow, referring diplomatic relations between the countries. Sikorski also revealed that Poland was considering finally lifting its opposition to EU-Russia negotiations on a new partnership agreement. He added that he hoped Russia would lift its ban on other Polish food exports in the near future.