Poland: Tusk's icy reception

Donald Tusk is due to visit Moscow this Friday, the first Polish prime minister to do so in six years.  He is expecting to see Russian President Vladimir Putin, among other senior officials, and to put historically difficult bilateral relations on a new, more pragmatic, good-neighbourly footing.   

Yet the visit could go horribly wrong.

The rub is Warsaw's agreement in principle last week to accept ten interceptor missiles on its soil, part of the US Missile Defence (MD) system to protect the United States from rogue states like Iran.  Russia regards Europe-based MD as directed against its own nuclear deterrent.  It had seemed to soften its stance, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov conceding Warsaw's sovereign right to take defence decisions, merely asking for Russia's interests to be taken into account.  But it has now voiced its displeasure, with the head of the parliamentary international affairs committee repeating threats to target Poland in retaliation, and Russia's ambassador to NATO reminding Warsaw of the "tragic" consequences of the Second World War confrontation.

So far, Moscow's displeasure has been rather indirect -- Ambassador Dmitry Rogozin is just the man to voice Russia's new-found 'great power' pretensions, but perhaps not a Kremlin insider, while parliament's role in foreign policy is mostly rhetorical.  However, a Kremlin spokesman has just said a meeting with Tusk is not yet on Putin's schedule.  With the Russian presidential election coming up -- Tusk's visit was ill timed in this respect -- Moscow may choose to give Tusk a cool reception, perhaps mending fences later.