Stuart Dowell

A shocking part of the Trump–Russia "peace plan" isn’t just what it does to Ukraine. It is what it quietly does to Poland. Buried in point 9 is a sentence that looks harmless: European fighters will be stationed in Poland. On paper, that sounds fine. In practice, though, it looks like Washington and Moscow have agreed over Poland’s head to limit the presence of foreign forces on Polish soil, including US forces, and to put a ceiling on NATO air power over the region. If “European fighters” are explicitly named, the obvious Russian reading is simple: no US jets in Poland. And if Russia is co-signing language that defines who and what can be stationed here, it is also a de facto say over NATO air policing in the Baltics and the rest of the eastern flank. That is not “Pax Americana.” That is the US accepting a Russian veto over the security posture of front-line allies. For Polish politics this hits a very specific nerve. For years, Jarosław Kaczyński and now President Karol Nawrocki have built their doctrine on one core idea: forget Brussels, forget Berlin, our security rests on a direct, privileged relationship with Washington. For a country that has spent a decade telling itself that American power is the only real guarantee, that should be a brutal wake-up call.

Christian Schmidt’s resignation from the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina may officially have been for “personal reasons”, but it also shows how much the post-Dayton order has hollowed out and the increasingly uncomfortable position Europe faces over its own strategic autonomy. For almost three decades, Bosnia’s fragile settlement rested on a relatively stable arrangement. The United States provided the hard political and security backing behind the Dayton agreement, while the European Union focused on gradual integration, reform and the long-term prospect of EU membership. That has been turned on its head. Russia has long wanted the Office of the High Representative abolished because it sees the institution as an obstacle to Republika Srpska’s ambitions and to weakening Bosnia’s central state. At the same time, the Trump administration has increasingly moved toward the language of “local solutions” and lighter international supervision, while also lifting sanctions on Milorad Dodik and other Republika Srpska figures. At a UN Security Council session in October, US ambassador Dorothy Shea declared that Washington was “no longer pursuing nation-building or heavy-handed international intervention” and that Bosnia needed “local solutions” led by representatives of its “three constituent peoples.” What makes the situation more complicated is that Trump-linked business networks are also becoming economically involved in Bosnia through major energy infrastructure projects. The emerging picture looks more transactional than ideological. All of this leaves the European Union in a much more exposed position than before. Bosnia may now be one of the few places where the EU actually has the leverage to act as a geopolitical actor largely on its own. So the question is whether it can actaully follow through.

Poland’s former justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro is now in the United States. Politically, his move to the US is awkward for almost everyone. It is bad for Donald Tusk’s government because it raises questions about whether its promise to hold former PiS officials to account can be pursued with full force when Ziobro is now in the country Poland depends on most for security. It is bad for PiS because Ziobro in the US working as a journalist for TV Republika keeps the Justice Fund, Pegasus and judicial capture stories alive. Every appearance he makes from the US reminds voters of the most controversial parts of PiS’s years in power. It may also be bad for President Karol Nawrocki. His relationship with Donald Trump is politically useful, but if Trump’s America is seen as protecting Ziobro, Nawrocki risks being tied to the corruption and cronyism many Confederation voters dislike. Even so, Ziobro’s absence is not all bad for the government. By fleeing first to Hungary and now to the US, he makes himself look like a man avoiding a Polish courtroom. That strengthens the government’s political argument. It also spares Tusk’s coalition the difficult optics of putting a seriously ill former minister on trial, which could have generated sympathy for him and turned the case into a martyrdom spectacle. So Ziobro’s move is both useful and damaging for the government.

Europe has just countered with its own preferred negotiator for dialogue between Russian and Europe

A prolonged political crisis risks a downgrade to Romania’s credit rating, higher borrowing costs and further pressure on the currency. The underlying problem will remain. Romania needs to repair its public finances but the politics of that repair is strengthening AUR.

The more likely outcome is another attempt to build a new pro-European coalition, probably with a different prime minister and a revised balance between the centrist parties. A failure to form a stable government could be expensive.

Romania’s government fell this afternoon after losing a no-confidence vote, and the way it happened shows that the political firewall around AUR, the country’s hard-right nationalist party, is starting to break down. 1/

Meanwhile, the Left and Razem are quietly becoming more relevant at 8.7 and 4%, because Trump’s return may end up mobilising liberal and left-wing voters in Poland rather than strengthening the Polish right.

Its survival depends not only on KO’s strength, but on the discipline of smaller parties that are fighting for their own political futures.

Polish politics is settling into an awkward pattern for both main camps a year and a half from the parliamentary election in 2027. PiS has a ceiling problem. KO has a coalition problem. 1/👇