Ukraine war escalates, as Russia warns of nuclear war should peace talks fail

Andrea Peters

An explosion is seen after a Russian air strike on Kyiv, Ukraine, on Friday, June 6, 2025. [AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka]

Russia has launched a series of large-scale air attacks over the last several days, in response to Kiev’s recent attempt to blow up the bridge connecting Crimea to the Russian mainland and assaults on airfields thousands of miles away from the Russian-Ukrainian border and deep in Moscow’s territory.

Since Sunday night, more than 800 drones and missiles have been launched against Ukraine. While Kiev claims most were shot down, there were strikes across the country, including in the capital city and the Dubno airbase in the west, where American-made F-16 fighters are stationed. Poland reported scrambling jets in western Ukraine on Sunday night in response to the air assault.

On the ground, Russian troops have now retaken Sumy in Ukraine’s northeast, reversing gains Kiev made three years ago. Moscow also reports that it has pushed into Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in central Ukraine. Kiev denies this, claiming Moscow is spreading “false information.” If true, this will “create new problems for Kyiv’s much-stretched forces,” noted CNN in an article on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the Zelensky government is continuing its onslaught. This past weekend, drones damaged a Russian airfield in Nizhniy Novgorod and a factory in Cheboksary that makes war materiel, resulting in the suspension of production at the plant. Both are located far to the east of Moscow. On Tuesday, a chemical facility in Tula Oblast caught fire after being hit for the second time. Flights at airports serving Russia’s first and second largest cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, were briefly halted that day due to drone attacks. Bombings in Belgorod, a Russian oblast bordering Ukraine, occur daily.

In April, President Zelensky reported that his soldiers are operating on the ground in Belgorod, a fact acknowledged at the time by unofficial Russian sources. This is Ukraine’s second incursion into Russian territory, after Kiev’s now-failed attempt to seize the region of Kursk in 2024.  

The escalation of the fighting, sought by NATO, risks instigating nuclear war. The European powers are vehemently opposed to any America-led peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, which threatens to shatter the Euro-Atlantic alliance and is likely to be made at their expense.

At the same time, the Trump administration is in no way encumbered by the president’s promises to end the war “within 24 hours” of taking office. It has its own calculations as to what is profitable for US imperialism and what concessions, if any, it is willing to make on the Russian front in order that it may concentrate on the Chinese one. Despite overtures to Moscow, the White House may retreat from efforts to settle the conflict.

On June 5, after a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Trump declared that Ukraine and Russia were akin to “two young children fighting like crazy.” “You’re better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart,” he said. Delivered in his usual crude style, the White House leader made clear that he sees a strategic advantage in allowing Russia and Ukraine to exhaust themselves through war.

Trump simultaneously threatened to punish both Kiev and Moscow with sanctions. “We’ll be very, very, very tough, and it could be on both countries to be honest,” he said.

Shortly before Trump issued these statements, Russia and Ukraine met in Turkey for a second round of US-brokered peace talks. The discussion lasted an hour and resulted in an agreement to exchange prisoners and war dead but nothing else. After delays over the weekend, the process began on Monday.

While some news sources say that the number of people, alive or not, changing hands is unknown, the British Guardian reported that 1,200 members of each side’s armed forces are returning home, namely those wounded and under the age of 25. Russian presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky told the press on Monday that his country is prepared to return 6,000 soldiers’ bodies to Ukraine, but that the Zelensky government is refusing to accept them because it does not want to acknowledge the scale of its losses.

With his military facing a catastrophic situation and his far-right government fearing the prospect of a peace deal worked out at their expense, Zelensky vacillates between obsequiousness before Washington and pressing it for more guns.

On June 8, he gave an interview to ABC News in which he went back and forth between implying that the White House was undermining the war effort, demanding an expansion of the conflict with American backing and declaring that Ukraine was ready to lay down its arms.

In his exchange with ABC’s Martha Raddatz, Zelensky lamented that the US has reneged on its promise to send Kiev 20,000 missiles capable of taking out Russian drones. The White House sent them to the Middle East instead, he said.

Zelensky insisted that this was a mistake. “We can only counter” Russia “with force,” he declared. “We can stop [Russia] in their tracks, and probably then they will be ready for some kind of diplomacy and talks. We have to prepare such plans, and we are not stopping.

“I am convinced that the president of the United States has all the powers and enough leverage to step up,” he said, insisting that Trump must exert “hard pressure.”

Zelensky further claimed that Kiev was prepared to lay down all its arms, if Moscow did as well. Last week’s bombing run on Russian airfields makes clear, however, that Ukraine and, above all, NATO and the US are prepared to risk nuclear war should they not get what they want.

The same day that Zelensky gave his interview, several representatives of the Russian government outlined their country’s position. Speaking of Moscow’s recent territorial gains in central Ukraine, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said that his country’s armed forces initiated their latest offensive after Ukraine refused to recognize Russian territorial control during the recent peace talks.

“Anyone who does not want to acknowledge the realities of war in negotiations will receive new realities on the ground,” Medvedev threatened on the social media outlet Telegram.

At the same time, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the press that peace depended on “practical steps aimed at eliminating the root causes of the fundamental contradictions between us in the area of security,” by which he meant halting the expansion of NATO.

Without this, he said, “it is simply impossible to resolve the current conflict in the Euro-Atlantic region.”

According to Reuters, Moscow is demanding a written commitment that NATO will not extend itself further east.

Identifying the United States and NATO as instigators of the war, Ryabkov said the ceasefire talks test “the seriousness of Washington’s intentions to straighten out our relations.” He further told TASS news agency that the war would not stop until NATO troops are pulled out of the Baltic.

In a demonstration, however, of its position, in late May, Germany deployed 4,800 soldiers to the Baltic country of Lithuania on a permanent mission, the first of its kind since the World War II.

The implications of what would happen should a peace deal fail to take into account Moscow’s central demand were made clear the very same day by Vladimir Medinsky, Russia’s lead negotiator in the talks with Ukraine.

“If you stop the conflict along the front line and don’t agree on a real peace, just make some kind of truce, then it will be—you know, such a disputed region between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Karabakh—then this region will turn into a huge Karabakh. After some time, Ukraine together with NATO, with allies will join NATO, will try to reclaim it, and it will be the end of the planet, it will be a nuclear war,” Medinsky said.

In a Kremlin briefing likewise delivered on June 9, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia reserves the right to deploy short- and medium-range missiles if NATO’s aggression on its borders does not halt.

Merz government tightens migration policy and arms police

Johannes Stern

Alexander Dobrindt being sworn in as federal minister of the interior on May 6, 2025 [Photo by DBT / Thomas Imo / photothek]

While President Donald Trump is mobilising the National Guard and the military against the population in the United States, the German government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) is also moving towards an authoritarian police state. The latest decisions by the federal cabinet on migration policy and the planned arming of the federal police with Tasers mark a further escalation. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (Christian Social Union, CSU) is openly pursuing the agenda of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

In recent weeks, the cabinet has passed several draft laws that effectively abolish the right to asylum and humanitarian protection and facilitate the deportation of tens of thousands of people.

Among other things, the government wants to define so-called “safe countries of origin” by means of a statutory order, thereby massively expanding deportations to these countries. Unlike a formal law, such orders do not have to be debated and passed by the Bundestag or the Bundesrat (lower and upper houses of parliament). In their coalition agreement, the CDU, CSU and Social Democratic Party (SPD) had already announced that they would expand the list of safe countries of origin. Countries such as Algeria, India, Morocco and Tunisia are being discussed.

At the same time, key rights are being undermined: family reunification for beneficiaries of subsidiary protection is being stopped and facilitated naturalisation is being abolished. These measures not only violate fundamental human rights, they also contradict applicable European law. The right to respect for family life (Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights) is being trampled underfoot, as is the individual right to asylum.

The refugee organisation Pro Asyl reacted with horror to the measures. It said that this would close legal and safe escape routes. “It is a disaster for the families affected,” said Tareq Alaows. “The de facto separation will last longer than two years, especially for families who have been waiting for years for their applications to be processed.”

The entry rejections at Germany’s external borders are particularly extreme. Despite a ruling by the Berlin Administrative Court on June 2 that the rejection of asylum seekers at the borders is illegal, Interior Minister Dobrindt stated: “We will continue to act at the border if necessary. Germany must decide for itself who enters the country.”

With this openly unlawful stance, the government is following the example of Trump, who also ignores court rulings in the United States. The German constitution and international agreements are being undermined in an authoritarian manner.

The project to promote freedom of information, “FragDenStaat” (Ask the State), has filed a criminal complaint against the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the President of the Federal Police, Dieter Romann, for “inciting subordinates to commit a criminal offence.” “The rejections” are “criminal offences” and could be “considered coercion through abuse of official authority.” The Legal Tribune Online website also speaks of an “obvious breach of law.”

At the same time, the authorities are carrying out brutal deportations, which are increasingly meeting with opposition from the population. In Frankfurt, an Afghan family with two school-age children had 20 minutes to pack before being deported to India. In Offenbach, a nursery school teacher was deported to Lithuania—even though she was considered a much-needed skilled worker. Such individual fates are not exceptions, but the systematic expression of an inhumane deportation policy.

According to the federal government, this policy is to be tightened at European level as well. “We are working with a two-pillar strategy to combat illegal migration, namely a European pillar and a national pillar,” Dobrindt told the Bundestag on June 6.

The European pillar included, among other things, “the implementation and tightening of the Common European Asylum System, ... a common European return regulation and, yes, the establishment of European asylum centres at the external borders of the European Union.” In other words, mass deportations and the locking up of refugees in concentration camps at the external borders.

Significantly, after Dobrindt’s list of planned measures, the Bundestag minutes note the interjection of an AfD member of parliament: “The AfD is working, I would say!”

And that’s not all. Parallel to the tightening of migration policy, the state apparatus of repression is being massively beefed up. Dobrindt announced that the federal police would be equipped with “Tasers” across the board. He said it was “about expanding the repertoire of our forces and protecting lives.” This is pure cynicism.

Tasers are not harmless or even “life-saving” alternatives, but dangerous weapons. These electric shock guns fire high-voltage darts that penetrate clothing and hook themselves into body tissue. The electric pulse can be triggered multiple times and regularly causes serious injury or even death.

In the United States, where Tasers have long been part of everyday police practice, the number of deaths resulting from such use is well documented. An investigation by the Associated Press found that between 2012 and 2021, 538 people were killed by stun guns.

The planned arming of the police does not serve to protect the population, but rather to intimidate and violently repress it. Like the attacks on migrants, it is directed against the entire working class. Amid growing social inequality, massive rearmament and preparations for war, the ruling class wants to nip any opposition in the bud and, if necessary, suppress it with potentially lethal weapons.

The criticism of the latest decisions by the Greens and the Left Party is tame and hypocritical. The Greens spokesperson on refugee policy, Filiz Polat, described the “suspension of family reunification” as “problematic.” As part of the last federal government, the Greens themselves had constantly tightened refugee policy. The Left Party also criticises “the government’s right-wing policies” in its Sunday speeches, but, like the Greens, voted in the Bundesrat for the Merz government’s war credits. And, as a governing party at the state level, it is involved in brutal deportations.

The tightening of migration policy and the expansion of the police state are two sides of the same coin: they serve to prepare for social conflicts and to enforce the massive rearmament and war course against the enormous opposition in the population.

Eighty years after the end of the Second World War, Germany is to become “fit for war” again, as Defence Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) already demanded in autumn 2023. The reintroduction of compulsory military service, a target military budget of 5 percent of gross domestic product (around €225 billion), preparations for war against the nuclear power Russia and growing tensions between the imperialist powers, especially the US—all this requires, as in the 1930s, a break with democratic rule and the establishment of a dictatorship.

Three months before presidential elections, Bolivia gripped by economic crisis

Cesar Uco

Sign at La Paz protest supporting return to office by Bolivia's former President Evo Morales [Photo by @EVOespueblo577 vía Youtube, Radio Kausachun Coca (Bolivia) / CC BY 3.0]

With less than three months until the presidential elections, Bolivia is gripped by an unprecedented political and economic crisis. The government has requested that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) delay the release of a document on Bolivia’s financial situation, but its contents have been leaked on social media.

The report highlights high inflation, a shortage of US dollars that disrupts trade, and fuel shortages leading to long lines for truckers at gas stations.

The political landscape is highly fragmented, with the ruling Movement for Socialism (MAS,) divided into factions supporting former President Evo Morales, current President Luis Arce, and Andrónico Rodríguez, who broke away from the Morales faction to run for president with a new party, Alianza Popular. 

Right-wing parties failed to unite behind a single candidate, and the upcoming election will feature nine candidates spanning the political spectrum.

Morales is seeking support for his presidential candidacy, despite the Constitution barring him from running after completing two terms in office. Supporters among coca growers have marched demanding his eligibility, leading to clashes with police, who used tear gas after protesters threw stones. In a troubling incident, protesters also attacked the press, including a reporter from China.

Evo Morales began his political career in the late 1990s as a leader of coca growers, opposing US efforts to eradicate coca crops. In 1997, he founded the Movement for Socialism (MAS), which garnered support from major peasant and worker organizations, ultimately becoming the dominant political force in Bolivia. As recently as 2020, the MAS presidential candidate, Luis Arce, won with 55 percent of the votes.

During the early years of Evo Morales’s presidency (2006–2019), Bolivia benefited from the commodities boom that lasted from 2002 to 2014. Critical of US imperialist domination, Morales and Hugo Chávez from Venezuela promoted “21st Century Socialism” and a nationalist agenda that included the promotion of political participation by indigenous peoples. The 2009 Constitution declared Bolivia a Plurinational State.

In 2005, Morales nationalized Bolivia’s oil fields, defying the IMF and World Bank agenda for Latin America. This move enabled him to implement subsidies for basic goods that significantly contributed to reducing poverty.

However, during his second term, lower commodity prices and reduced foreign investment led to an economic slowdown; such that, between 2014 and 2024 Bolivia’s oil revenues decreased from $5.491 billion to $1.635 billion, and gas production was halved, from approximately 60 million cubic meters per day to 29.55 million. 

The IMF report demands urgent fiscal adjustments, including an initial devaluation of the exchange rate to restore stability. It deems as unsustainable price controls, fuel subsidies, and export restrictions, effectively mandating an end to MAS’ plurinational populist economic model, even as poverty increases in Bolivia.

The IMF, as reported by Infobae:

...presents a concerning outlook for Bolivia. The organization projects that inflation will reach 15.8 percent by 2025, more than double the government’s forecast of 7.5 percent. Additionally, economic growth is expected to be limited, with a predicted GDP growth of only 1.1 percent.

Based on the IMF report, Infobae reports that “In the first three months of the year, accumulated inflation hit 5 percent, … and household prices have risen significantly over the past two years.”

Recent statistics indicate troubling trends in Bolivia. Once known for a stable consumer price index (CPI), the CPI rose by 1.71 percent in March, leading to an annual rate of 22.6 percent. With inflation largely due to increasing household goods prices, the most affected are working class and peasant families.

Food price hikes are having a severe impact on the Bolivian population, with chicken up 9.45 percent, beef 4.45 percent, tomatoes 25.58 percent and onions 22.83 percent. 

The IMF points to the country’s inability to meet its financial commitments to foreign capital, Infobae reports:

The fiscal situation is particularly critical. The deficit is increasingly financed through loans from the Central Bank, which has depleted international reserves—expected to be nearly exhausted by the end of 2023—and raised public debt to 84 percent of GDP.

Additionally, lower gas exports and high fuel imports have resulted in a current account deficit of 5 percent of GDP.

Bloomberg Online has reported a negative outlook on Bolivia among global investors, stating: 

Price increases in the country continue to escalate, with March inflation reaching over 14.6 percent year-on-year, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INE). This positions Bolivia as the fourth most inflationary country in Latin America, following Argentina, Venezuela, and Cuba, despite having one of the lowest inflation rates globally during the pandemic.

As economic reserves dwindled and public finances deteriorated, the government could no longer sustain its subsidies. It faced declining popularity, and internal conflicts leading to rivalry between Arce and Evo Morales for control of the party.

The Bolivian economy faced a setback with the cancellation of contracts between Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB) and the Chinese company CBC, as well as the Russian Uranium One Group. Bolivia has the world’s largest lithium reserves, essential for electric vehicles and high-tech products.

Ahead of the elections, MAS has splintered into three tendencies, including Morales:

• Eduardo del Castillo, a former Minister of Government endorsed by President Luis Arce, represents the consolidation of “arcism” within the MAS. 
• Andrónico Rodríguez, President of the Bolivian Senate, has distanced himself from Morales by running for president with the Alianza Popular party.
• Evo Morales was disqualified from the election for not registering his new party, Evo Pueblo. He later attempted to register with the Bolivian National Action Party (PAN-BOL), but that party was also not authorized.

The other leading presidential candidates share far-right views. They include:

• Samuel Doria Medina, a businessman and politician leading the National Unity (UN) coalition. This includes right-wing figures like Luis Fernando Camacho, who during the 2019 coup, famously entered the Government Palace with a Bible, symbolizing his rejection of what he considered an “atheist and communist” regime.

• Manfred Reyes Villa, the mayor of Cochabamba since 2021 and a member of the Autonomía Para Bolivia-Súmate (APB Súmate) party. His father, Armando Reyes Villa, served as defense minister under dictator Luis García Meza. Manfred Reyes Villa is a former military officer and businessman who studied at the Pentagon’s School of the Americas. This institution was known for teaching counterinsurgency strategies and promoting anti-communist ideology, with many alumni involved in human rights violations and coups.

• Chi Hyun Chung, an ultraconservative evangelical pastor and doctor born in South Korea. Leading the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario, he is a supporter of Trump and has been dubbed “the Bolivian Bolsonaro” for his fierce anti-communism and opposition to LGBTQ rights. He advocates pro-life policies and a militarized Bolivia, while criticizing the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) and Evo Morales for promoting a “communist” model.

Morales’ “21st Century Socialism” has failed, contributing to an economic crisis and the threatened return to power of the far right.

After being excluded from the presidential race, Morales mobilized his supporters in a march on La Paz, leading to confrontations with police following President Arce’s orders to stop them.

Far-right opposition candidate wins presidential election in Poland

Martin Nowak

Karol Nawrocki [AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski]

According to the results of Poland’s national election commission, Karol Nawrocki won the run-off election for president on Sunday with 50.89 percent of the vote. His opponent Rafał Trzaskowski received 49.11 percent. Nawrocki, who was supported by the extreme right-wing opposition PiS (Law and Justice) party, received 10,606,628 votes, while the candidate of the ruling PO (Civic Platform) party received 10,237,177 votes.

As in the first round, voter turnout reached another record high of 71.63 percent. The enormous politicisation reflected in this makes defeat for the government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk all the more difficult.

It is absolutely clear that the vote in favour of Nawrocki is first and foremost a vote against the Tusk government, which was able to form a coalition government after the 2023 parliamentary elections as the Civic Coalition. This is confirmed not only by the figures, but also by media commentators and members of the governing coalition themselves.

Trzaskowski has been a close political ally of the current head of government since at least 2013, when he was appointed by Tusk to his first government. He has been mayor of Warsaw since 2018 and was narrowly defeated by the then incumbent Andrzej Duda in the 2020 election. Trzaskowski, the man from the capital, exemplifies the political divisions in the country: While the government and PO are strong in the west and in the cities, the PiS dominates in the countryside and in the east.

Social differences are also reflected in voting behaviour: while the majority of better-off employees and managers voted for Trzaskowski, Nawrocki was particularly popular with farmers and the poorer working class voters.

The government camp has lost support in the urban milieu in particular since its 2023 election victory. If you place the votes of the anti-PiS coalition in the Sejm (parliament) elections two years ago in relation to the current turnout, Trzaskowski should have received over 11 million votes. He had plenty of support: officially, he was backed by all parties in the governing camp, as well as three eliminated candidates from the preliminary round, five former heads of state or government (Wałęsa, Bielecki, Miller, Kwaśniewski, Komorowski) and numerous intellectuals and celebrities.

But nothing has remained of the former spirit of optimism surrounding the collapse of Stalinism. Even if it was always vague and filled with terms such as “democracy” or “rule of law”, many associated it with concrete hopes—for more equal rights, protection for minorities, humane migration policies. Instead, the Tusk government not only continued the PiS policies, but even massively tightened them in some areas, such as limiting migration and asylum.

Trzaskowski’s election campaign also focused on “shedding the ‘left’ label, and many of his statements were more similar to the PiS narrative than that of the Civic Coalition—both in terms of worldview and economic and social issues”, as Mateusz Baczyński commented for the Onet website.

Nawrocki’s far-right agenda hardly came under attack. Instead, the election campaign focused on his past as a boxer and bouncer—which probably made him even more attractive to many as an “underdog” and “anti-establishment figure”.

The rejection of the political establishment is particularly clear among young people. In the first round of voting, the far-right and supposedly “far-left” candidates Menzen and Zandberg together received around 56 percent of the vote in the under-30 age group.

The “Young people, vote!” campaign reviewed the voting behaviour and motives of young people. According to Paweł Mrozek, a member of the initiative, many young people did not vote for Nawrocki out of conviction, but out of rejection of Trzaskowski and the government camp.

The issues that are important to young people—such as education, mental health, housing, work and quality of life—hardly play a role in government initiatives, Mrozek continued.

Criticism is also growing within the governing coalition. Szymon Hołownia from Polska 2050 spoke of the government being given a “yellow, partly red card”. Ahead of the coalition’s emergency meeting, he called for a new coalition agreement in order to “clearly tell the citizens what we intend to do in the next two years”. At the same time, he expressed doubts about Tusk’s plan to call a vote of confidence—a statement that he withdrew after internal criticism, partly because Polska 2050 is likely to be one of the biggest losers in any new elections.

Criticism from the right-wing conservative PSL (Peoples Party), which forms the Trzecia Droga (Third Way) alliance together with Polska 2050, was much harsher. Marek Sawicki, a former minister under Tusk, accused him of “laziness” and “disinterest in government work” and called for a constructive vote of no confidence to reappoint the head of government.

Włodzimierz Czarzasty from the social democratic Nowa Lewica (New Left) party also declared: “I think that we have simply messed up a lot as a government.” He also urged a vote of confidence in order to stabilise the coalition.

The coming weeks will show whether and to what extent the Tusk government faces a crisis as a result of the presidential election. In an eagerly awaited speech on Monday evening, Tusk announced that he would “not let up for a moment” and would call for a vote of confidence—as a signal to the country and abroad. In other words: he wants to stick to his right-wing and militaristic course. His government’s “priorities” included “building a powerful army,” a “strong economy,” the “re-Polandisation of industry” and “fighting crime.”

While Nawrocki’s election victory is undoubtedly also due to the government’s anti-social and disappointing policies, the role of the war in Ukraine should not be underestimated. Poland is the central NATO state on the border with Russia and—with broad support from all parties—has adopted a massive rearmament and militarisation programme. Sawicki’s accusation of “disinterest” on Tusk’s part probably also refers to his foreign policy trips, for example to promote a joint European arms offensive. A few weeks before the election, Tusk signed a friendship agreement with France on security policy cooperation.

However, the opposition is no less bellicose. Back in March 2022, PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński called for a “NATO peacekeeping mission” for Ukraine. Poland has been a logistical hub for weapons and intelligence support since the start of the war. However, shortly before being voted out of office, the PiS increasingly distanced itself from Ukraine—a reaction to growing tensions within NATO and the EU over the escalation of the war. These differences have intensified dramatically with Trump’s second term in office. It is no coincidence that US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem openly called for Nawrocki’s election at the far-right CPAC conference in Warsaw. During the election campaign, the latter repeatedly declared his rejection of EU or NATO membership for Ukraine.

Surveys show just how much the PiS is benefiting from growing opposition to the war: approval of arms deliveries to Ukraine has fallen by around 20 percent since the start of the war. At the same time, there has been an increase in agitation against Ukrainian refugees—even though most of them work in Poland and do not receive any state benefits.

The constant anti-Russia threat narrative is also meeting with increasing rejection. Only around a fifth of the population would voluntarily defend the country in the event of war—over a third preferring to flee abroad.

The elections in Poland shed light on the actual situation in a country that is often celebrated by Western economic commentators for its growth rates. However, despite all appearances of modernisation, social inequality has worsened since the restoration of capitalism and is increasingly undermining the foundations of democratic rule.

Poland is among the most unequal in Europe, with the latest data showing that the top 10 percent takes in more than 37 percent of income, while the bottom 50 percent accounts for less than 22 percent.

The high approval ratings for nationalist and in some cases openly fascist forces in particular show how unresolved historical issues weigh heavily on social consciousness.