By Tarik Cyril Amar, Website, 10/19/25

Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk just couldn’t resist an opportunity to bait the Germans and rub it in just how humiliated they are now. And not once but twice: First, when one of the Ukrainians suspected of executing the September 2022 terrorist attack on the Nord Stream pipelines – the “world’s largest offshore pipeline system” and as vital a piece of German infrastructure as has ever been built – was recently arrested in Poland, Tusk could have simply kept quiet.

But where would have been the fun of that? Instead, the Polish prime minister made a point of holding an aggressive press conference and also using X to tell Berlin to, in essence, go and jump in the Baltic.

Tusk declared that extraditing the Ukrainian state terror suspect is not in Poland’s national “interest,” and that, anyhow, the real scandal about Nord Stream is not that it was blown up but that it was built. In other words: Dear Germans, we do not give a damn about your property, rights, or judicial procedures; on the contrary we expect you to feel ashamed for ever having dared construct a perfectly legal and useful pipeline that we in Warsaw didn’t like. And dare not notice, by the way, that we had a direct commercial interest in the Baltic Pipe competition that – oh coincidence! – went online just when Nord Stream exploded.

Then, a few days later, the Polish leader felt the need to add insult to insult: After a Polish court had obediently – and illegally (so much for that famous rule of law in EU-Nato-land) – denied the German extradition request, Tusk just had to gloat, letting his X followers know that “the case is closed.” Obviously, Tusk is a raving nationalist – under that cheap, career-facilitating EU varnish – and he also has an interest in impressing the Polish public with his tough talk. Yet the real issue is, of course, that he – rightly – perceives no cost to this behavior: Berlin will take it.

And that despite the fact that what wasn’t said but implied, at least for anyone not yet fully zombified by the West’s mainstream “cognitive warfare,” was, of course, even worse: Poland won’t extradite a suspected Ukrainian terrorist because that terrorist did what Warsaw considered the right and profitable thing to do and, thus, helped his group of seven do.

Then, a few days later, the head of Poland’s spooks Slawomir Cenckiewicz felt the itch to make things even clearer: He told the Financial Times that from the Polish point of view going after the Nord Stream bombers “doesn’t make sense, not only in terms of the interests of Poland but also the whole [Nato] alliance.” Oops. Slawomir, we get it: as a likely accomplice you are personally affected in this case. But are you really sure you had permission to not only basically admit Poland was in on the terror job against the German “allies” but other NATO members, too?

But let’s be fair and acknowledge Warsaw’s discomfort. Indeed, as the Ukrainian criminals who blew up a vital part of Germany’s infrastructure were very likely also working for and with Poland, handing one of them over to the German victims of the worst eco-terror attack in European history would be a trifle harsh and ungrateful as well as really inconvenient, too: What if the rudely discarded deep-sea tool from Ukraine were to start spilling the beans – or, perhaps, pirogi – once he faces German interrogators? Plea deal anyone?

Tusk and Cenckiewicz’s weird, panicky announcements, let’s be precise, are not only so needlessly offensive toward the Germans – EU fellow members and NATO allies, no less – that they could have been produced by the infamous Kiev School of anti-diplomacy itself. The Polish prime minister and his master spook also displayed a truly brutish legal nihilism, because, under the pertinent European Union agreement, Poland does not, actually, even have a formal right to refuse an extradition by citing national “interest” (or NATO interest – whatever that is supposed to be – for that matter).

Maybe it should have, the sovereignists among us might say, but that’s not how the EU rolls and that is not what the agreement says that Poland has an obligation to follow. According to the 2002 “Council Framework Decision on the European Arrest Warrant and the Surrender Procedures between Member States,” refusing an extradition request is only permitted “when there are reasons to believe […] that the said arrest warrant has been issued for the purpose of prosecuting or punishing a person on the grounds of his or her sex, race, religion, ethnic origin, nationality, language, political opinions or sexual orientation, or that that person’s position may be prejudiced for any of these reasons.” In short, it’s all about the rights of the suspect, which Germany is certainly not threatening here. And there is not a word about national interest.

It may seem ironic that Tusk also once served as President of the European Council and is, in general, an EU creature through and through. But then again, trampling on EU laws – and others, too – is, of course, the true hallmark of the “elite” Eurocrat. It’s called the Von der Leyen Stay-Out-of-Jail Privilege.

Meanwhile, a high Italian court has also refused to extradite yet another suspected Ukrainian terror Nord Stream suspect. Italy, too, is a humble NATO foot soldier and obedient US vassal, of course. And Ukrainian officials and media are preparing a fresh defense line to fall back on when the Baltic sludge will really hit the fan: After years of brazenly, shamelessly lying in our faces Kiev-style and pretending they had nothing to do with the terror attack, they are currently explaining that it wasn’t a crime at all but a “legitimate” act of war. Oh, really now? Even by that very belated, inconsistent, and embarrassingly transparent “logic,” war against whom, if we Germans may ask: Your constant bankroller and NATO member Germany?

And what has Berlin had to say? Very little, as in, really, nothing. Oddly enough, the German establishment – the same that claims to want to play a “leadership role” in Europe, again – left it to the Foreign Minister of Hungary to articulate a common-sense response. Taking to X, Peter Szijjarto confronted Tusk him with the absurdity and recklessness of his own words: “According to” Donald Tusk, “blowing up a gas pipeline is acceptable. That’s shocking as it makes you wonder what else could be blown up and still be considered forgivable or even praiseworthy. One thing is clear: we don’t want a Europe where prime ministers defend terrorists.” The Hungarians, of course, know a thing or two about both sensitive pipelines and Ukrainian subterfuge and lawlessness among “allies.” But, unlike Berlin, Budapest won’t take it all lying down.

What are Germans to think about their own government that can’t find such words? Just words! Not even to speak about the sanctions that the Polish government actually deserves. The more so as Tusk publicly slapping Berlin in the face is not an exception but merely yet another instance of long-standing Polish policy. For those who have forgotten, after the Nord Stream terror attack, we were first told by our Western establishment politicians, “experts,” and media that Russia was to blame. That that idea made no sense at all didn’t matter. Sort of as with the current Great Drone Scare.

Then, finally, that big, fat, and very, offensively obvious lie was replaced by a smaller, slightly less idiotic one: Ukraine did it, and Ukraine alone. That Ukraine did it is probably still true, although recent revelations in Denmark have put the US front and center again. But, in any case, Ukraine alone? Definite, industrial-strength, offensively obvious BS.

And that’s what brings us back to Poland (and not only, of course). By the summer of last year, Polish attempts to obstruct the German investigation of the Nord Stream attacks became so obvious that even the Western mainstream press noticed. The Wall Street Journal reported that the “Nord Stream revelations” were igniting disputes between Berlin and Warsaw.

After all, not only were German prosecutors finally homing in on the obvious – though not the sole – perpetrators from Ukraine, they also had to face the fact that the terrorists had used Poland “as a logistical base.” And some German officials were still patriotic enough to dare think and even say – though under cover of anonymity – the obvious: Poland was deliberately stalling their investigation, first, for instance, by absurdly claiming that the Ukrainian terrorists had been mere innocent tourists, then by refusing to hand over evidence and letting – more realistically, helping – a suspect escape (the same one they are now not extraditing, as it happens).

Polish officials, meanwhile, openly told their German counterparts that, in their view, those who had detonated Nord Stream deserved not prosecution but medals. Then as well, Tusk, too, had nothing better to do than add insult to injury, as German investigators put it, publicly ordering the Germans to “apologize” – for the temerity of building pipelines, obviously – and “keep quiet.”

Here’s the Polish deal the Germans got: I, Warsaw, help the Ukrainians, who also fleece your taxpayers, blow up your pipelines and promote your deindustrialization, and you, Berlin, in return, shut up and apologize to me. As a bonus I regularly slap you in the face in public. Fair? And, insane as it is, up until now, the German answer has been: “Jawohl! And can I have some more, please?”

Berlin emerges in this story as a deliberately helpless victim of both a massive terror attack by Ukraine – an ultra-corrupt state it is still insisting on shoveling cash into and for which it risking a (direct) war with Russia – and its so-called “allies,” including probably not only Poland but also the US and perhaps Britain and Norway as well.

We often hear that the US and its vassals provoked the Ukraine War to inflict a crippling defeat on Russia and turn it into a helpless object of American geopolitics. That is all true. The irony is that Germany is the country they actually ended up crippling the most. And with Germany’s consent, from Olaf Scholz’s hapless grin to Friedrich Merz’s thunderous silence.

For the US, devastating Germany is, of course, plan B: Plan A, defeating Russia, has not worked, but as one dogma of US strategy in Eurasia is to never allow deep cooperation between Berlin and Moscow, taking down Germany will also do for Washington. Poor Germany: “Friends” like these, and yet, its “leaders” can’t stop looking for enemies in Moscow.