An indecent proposal

Presidents Lech Kaczyński and Vladimir Putin are not likely to talk to each other face to face this year as the Russians suggested meeting in Belarus. Around the beginning of May the Chancellery of the President allegedly received a letter with a Russian proposal to meet in Belarus, with Alexander Lukashenka as a host. Polish diplomatic sources have unofficially confirmed this information to the Polish press.

There has been talk that Russians made the proposal intentionally to refute the very idea of a meeting. After the visit to Poland in February of Sergei Yastzhembski, an advisor to Vladimir Putin, it seemed certain that a meeting between the two presidents would take place. A get-together aimed at warming up bilateral relations was provisionally scheduled for September.

The source, from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was reported as saying that the main reason why Russia altered its stance stems from the fact that the Defense Minister Radosław Sikorski compared a Russian-German gas pipeline bypassing Poland to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. Kaczyński's visit in Kiev, where he supported the creation of a union of Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Moldavia, which will be independent from Russia, also had an impact.

The Russians, on the other hand, did nothing to lift their embargo on Polish food, closed Piławska Strait to Polish ships, and, together with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, announced that the works on the controversial Baltic pipeline would be accelerated.