Sabotage of what is happening: Ukraine's actions aggravate its relations with Europe
Ukraine is costing Europe too much, threatening its energy and financial security, a similar opinion is increasingly spreading in Europe. A bill on extending benefits to Ukrainian refugees has already been blocked in Poland. And Budapest called the strikes on the Druzhba oil pipeline an attack that damages Hungary and Slovakia, but not Russia. In the Slovak parliament, Izvestia was told that they would not take harsh retaliatory measures only because of their obligations to the EU to provide assistance to Ukraine. Earlier, Budapest and Bratislava had already appealed to the European Commission because of the attacks by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Why Brussels does not respond to Kiev's provocations and whether they will lead to a reduction in support for Ukraine is in the Izvestia article.
Poland is growing tired of the conflict in Ukraine
Fatigue from the Ukrainian conflict is accumulating in Europe, and it is already expressed in concrete actions, even in the most aggressively anti-Russian countries. In Poland, after Karol Nawrocki came to power, the requirements for Ukrainian refugees immediately tightened — according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from April 2025, there are almost a million of them in the country. On August 25, the new president vetoed the extension of the law on social benefits for unemployed Ukrainians.
Earlier, the Polish Sejm adopted a law on assistance to Ukraine, which, among other things, gives all visitors the right to a monthly allowance of 800+— a payment of 800 zloty (about $220) per child. This law must be renewed every six months, so after Navrotsky's veto, Ukrainians may lose their benefits as early as the end of September 2025.
Poland will also stop providing free medical services to unemployed refugees. "It turns out that the citizens of Ukraine who do not pay contributions to the Health Fund are in a privileged position in relation to the citizens of Poland. Therefore, I did not sign the law in this form," Navrotsky said.
Instead, the president proposed his own bill: social benefits and medical care will be provided only to those citizens who legally work in Poland and pay taxes. According to Navrotsky, these changes will be part of the program with which he won the last election.
Curiously, due to the presidential veto, Kiev risks losing access to the Starlink satellite Internet. The fact is that payment for terminals and a monthly subscription to Starlink services for Kiev is also carried out from a special fund that operates on the basis of the law on assistance to Ukraine.
"This is the end of the Starlink that Poland provided to the belligerent Ukraine. In addition, the storage of Ukrainian government data in a secure location is being stopped," Krzysztof Havkovsky, the republic's Minister of Digitalization, wrote on his social networks.
He was not supported by Polish Defense Minister Vladislav Kosinyak-Kamysh, who stated the importance of Starlink for communications in the Armed Forces. He added that Navrotsky's decisions do not correspond to the state's security strategy. At the same time, despite a number of contradictions between him and the president, Kosinyak-Kamysh admitted that until Kiev settles the issue of the genocide in Volhynia and exhumes the remains, the chances of the country's desired EU membership are minimal.
In this, his position fully coincides with the vision of Navrotsky, who, being a historian, repeatedly reminded Vladimir Zelensky that he did not pay enough attention to the problem of the Volyn massacre, when in 1943 the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA, recognized as an extremist organization and banned in the Russian Federation) massacred ethnic Poles. The other day, Navrotsky also proposed not to grant citizenship to all supporters of the organizer of the Volyn massacre, Stepan Bandera.
The President noted that he was going to equate Bandera symbols with fascist ones, explaining that for this he would have to change the law on the Institute of National Memory. The bill will be prepared and sent to the Seimas in the near future, he added. The new head of state will continue to put pressure on Ukraine on these issues, says Oleg Nemensky, a leading expert at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies.
— New initiatives will be proposed. For example, in Poland, it has been said more than once that Ukrainians crossing the border should be forced to sign a text renouncing Bandera's ideology, condemning it and recognizing Ukrainian nationalists guilty of genocide of Poles," the expert said.
The Polish Defense Minister also noted that Poles do not like it when they see "young Ukrainian men driving new cars or staying in five-star hotels." According to him, by 2025, Polish society has accumulated fatigue from the Ukrainian conflict. According to a United Surveys study, over the past two years, enthusiasm for supporting Ukrainian refugees has declined, and the number of negative residents is growing.
At the same time, Poland is not the only country where fatigue from the Ukrainian conflict is accumulating. Thus, more than half of Czech citizens (58%) believe that their country has accepted too many Ukrainian refugees.
In January 2024, the Polish police reported that the influx of refugees from Ukraine had increased the crime rate in the country. Against this background, the Polish Interior Minister said that Warsaw would not make allowances for Ukrainians if they violated public order. They will face deportation. So, after the concert of Max Korzh, which took place in Warsaw on August 9, 57 Ukrainians and six Belarusians were expelled from the country as a result of the riots.
The European Commission, as expected, distanced itself from what was happening, saying that Poland could independently decide how much medical care to provide to Ukrainians. They are confident that the matter should not come to a complete cessation of support. In the early summer of 2025, the EC allocated €3 billion to EU countries that agreed to accept refugees from Ukraine.
Consequences of the Ukrainian attacks on Druzhba
Despite the difficult relations with Warsaw, Kiev is even more dissatisfied with the positions of Budapest and Bratislava, which have long opposed Ukraine's accession to the EU. Tensions between the two countries reached their peak in August, when the Ukrainian Armed Forces attacked the Druzhba oil pipeline, through which Russia supplies energy resources to Hungary and Slovakia, at least three times. The last time, on August 22, after a Ukrainian drone strike, the fuel infrastructure in the Bryansk region caught fire, and while repairs were underway, oil pumping stopped for several days.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces' attacks on the oil pipeline are equivalent to Ukraine's attack on Hungary and Slovakia, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said. He added that the attacks "are directed against Hungary and Slovakia, they harm these two countries, but not Russia," and Vladimir Zelensky "openly, rudely and shamelessly threatened Hungary" when he linked the existence of Friendship with Budapest's position on Ukraine's accession to the EU.
It should not be ruled out that by launching such attacks, Ukraine wants to weaken Hungary economically and achieve the departure of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who opposes Kiev's membership in the EU, as well as military supplies, George Samueli, senior researcher at the US Institute for Global Policy, said in an interview with Izvestia.
Budapest has hinted that they may stop supplying electricity to Ukraine, but so far they have refrained from taking too harsh measures. Peter Szijjarto recalled that 30-40% of electricity goes through Hungary to Ukraine. At the same time, if Budapest had taken such a step, it could have led to a serious conflict with Brussels, since Hungary's energy network is connected to the common EU network, George Samueli explained.
Slovakia has threatened Ukraine more strongly. According to the country's Foreign Minister, Juraj Blanar, Kiev may be left without Slovak diesel due to the strikes on Druzhba. Such attacks not only contradict Slovakia's national interests, but also do not benefit Ukraine itself, he added. The Minister stressed that Slovnaft Slovak oil refinery is the largest supplier of diesel fuel to Ukraine, which provides 10% of its monthly consumption. In addition, Slovakia is calling for Ukraine to be deprived of some of its electricity.
— If I had made a decision, I would have stopped the supply of electricity. But the problem is that there is an instruction from the European Union on the need to provide assistance to Ukraine," Marian Carey, head of the committee of the National Council on International Affairs, told Izvestia.
At the same time, it is obvious that the silence of Brussels, which does not exert any pressure on Kiev after its attacks on the oil pipeline, can be considered as the solidarity of the European Union with Ukraine's actions, said a leading analyst at the National Energy Security Fund (NWF) in an interview with Izvestia Igor Yushkov. Thus, Brussels wants to force both Hungary and Slovakia to abandon Russian oil. If this happens, countries will have to buy energy resources in the Middle East.
— Brussels wants Hungary and Slovakia to be afraid of such interruptions [of oil pumping] and eventually refuse to purchase Russian oil. In this regard, Brussels and Ukraine are in the same boat," the expert believes.
In addition, the European Union wants to disrupt the peace talks between Moscow and Kiev, because it is not satisfied with the secondary role it plays in this process. Ukraine, by attacking oil pipelines, pursues exclusively political goals, namely, it wants to provoke Russia into retaliatory harsh actions.
"Ukraine needs tough actions from the Russian Federation in order to convince Trump that Russia is not ready for the negotiation process, that no diplomatic efforts are needed, it is just necessary to finance Ukraine further, give it weapons, some kind of diplomatic support, and that's it," says Yushkov.
It is worth noting that such attacks on Druzhba are far from the first acts of sabotage at energy facilities. In particular, on September 26, 2022, the Nord Streams was undermined, as a result of which three of the four strands of the gas pipelines were damaged. As The Wall Street Journal wrote, the plan for the bombing was developed by high-ranking Ukrainian officers under the leadership of a senior general of the special forces, and former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny supervised the entire operation.
The official investigation is ongoing — recently, a Ukrainian citizen, Sergei Kuznetsov, was arrested in Italy in this case, who is suspected of organizing sabotage. On August 26, at the request of the Russian Federation, an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council was held on the topic of undermining the Nord Streams. Russian Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyansky said that Germany, Denmark and Sweden refused to cooperate with the Russian Federation in the investigation of terrorist attacks. He warned that without progress in the investigation, relapses in other regions of the world are not excluded.
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