The Nord Stream Loyalty Test

Warsaw has no respect for Germany and its national interests, but neither has Berlin

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.