POLAND PERSPECTIVE

Warsaw does not believe in the letter, and says so. wPolityce headlines "Effrontery! Putin designates the mediator he wants between Russia and Europe" and treats the Czech proposal (Merz as negotiator) as a trap set by Moscow to bypass the countries on Russia's border. The Polish press reads the whole sequence through the prism of 17 September 1939: any diplomatic arrangement designed without including the frontline countries is an arrangement that prepares a new Yalta. RMF24 reports more soberly Czech PM Babiš's proposal to entrust the negotiation to Merz, but the conservative media environment treats the suggestion as a signal of European fragmentation from which Moscow is the main beneficiary. The Polish reading grid is consistent: Warsaw does NOT want a Zelensky-Putin meeting steered by Berlin or by a Nobel-hungry US president. For Poland, the only acceptable exit from the conflict runs through a firm NATO security guarantee and the maintenance of sanctions — not through a dinner in Moscow or Geneva. Zelensky's letter is therefore received with a mix of respect for Kyiv's initiative and distrust for the diplomatic scenario it could open. For Warsaw, the issue is not peace itself but the perimeter of territorial concessions that could be accepted without its consent — a historical experience no Polish generation forgets.