Vladimir Putin, the President of the Russian Federation, once again told his own story of the Second World War in his article in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit. The Soviet Union appears in it exclusively in the role of the victim attacked by the Third Reich, who repulsed the attacker and then became the “savior of Europe”. Putin is of course not a hobby historian, but the leader of a state whose current identity is based on the glorification of imperial traditions. His offer for Germany looks like this: The European Union, dominated by the Federal Republic, should become part of a larger whole that is created through a connection with the Russian-dominated Eurasian Union.

The offer made by Putin is deeply rooted in his story about World War II, the core of which is a positive view of the Hitler-Stalin Pact.

This alliance paved the way for Hitler to go to war in Europe.

In return, Stalin was given the green light to subjugate the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe.

It is no coincidence that Russia has used the same methods of annexations and occupations in recent years as the Soviet Union used to subjugate Central Europe from 1939 to 1989.

German concept stopped

Thanks to a huge bloodletting of all the peoples of the Soviet Union, above all the Ukrainians, the Belarusians and the Russians, Stalin succeeded in Yalta at the end of the Second World War in expanding the sphere of influence that Hitler had assigned him to further areas. As a result, Europe was divided "from Stettin on the Baltic Sea to Trieste on the Adriatic" by an iron curtain. Russia has a long history of luring leading democratic politicians into an imperial trap.

The Iron Curtain had also divided Germany. Overcoming the division of Germany was therefore tantamount to the overthrow of the order adopted in Yalta and the liberation of the countries of Eastern Europe. And freedom always means that the model of further development and the way to implement social claims are freely decided, that imprisonment in concentration camps and the GULag is overcome, that possible membership in the EU and NATO is sought. The building of an undivided, free and peaceful Europe initiated by US President Georg H. Bush in 1989 was based on the rejection of the model of a concert of powers in favor of the idea of ​​freedom and the democratization of international relations. That is the alternative to Putin's current offer.

The German concept of change through trade plays an important role in Putin's narrative.

This concept was stopped by Putin in the manner of an experienced judoka who uses Germany's willingness to dialogue to change the Federal Republic.

Together with the gas from the Nord Stream pipeline, the Germans are to import the idea of ​​a concert of powers and a kleptocratic development model that results from the mutual dependence between politics, business and the criminal milieu.

The pipeline creates a security deficit

The Germans should therefore reject Putin's offer and choose the alternative, that is, a free Europe in which tensions are not overcome through back-room alliances between the great powers, but thanks to the consolidation of international law and the democratically secured respect for the sovereignty and equality of all countries - in the lived community of the free and equal.

The commissioning of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline will be the time for Germany to decide between these two models. Because Putin is luring the Federal Republic into an imperial trap - and some German elites already have their shares in it. One of my predecessors as Polish Foreign Minister once said in Berlin that he feared German passivity more than German power. Today I fear even more the lack of a German sense of responsibility for the consequences of working with Putin's Russia.

The completion of the Nord Stream 2 project means an enormous security deficit on NATO's eastern flank.

Ukraine will push them into a state of complete insecurity.

For this reason, I appeal to the Germans and ask them to become aware of their responsibility for the decisions related to the Nord Stream 2 project and to actually and not just appear to take part in compensating for the security deficits.

Germany must take responsibility

Putin did not invest large sums in the construction of this pipeline in order to forego its use as a political tool.

It is therefore necessary to protect both NATO's eastern flank and Ukraine, which as a victim of Russian aggression should be compensated by political support and by strengthening its defensive potential, more intensively than before.

Poland is ready to do its part.

The truthfulness of the feeling of responsibility for the atrocities committed in the Third Reich, which the German elites have repeatedly declared, can only be demonstrated in one way: by actually assuming responsibility for peace and the commitment to democracy of current European politics, especially after the completion of Nord Stream 2.