Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Mazowiecki on Thursday called for tougher sanctions against Moscow following the invasion of Ukraine. Western sanctions are “unprecedented, they go very far, but they are insufficient,” he said, citing as proof the reopening of the Moscow Stock Exchange on Thursday, the resumption of trading in Russian bonds and the strengthening of the ruble.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is “preparing Russia for a few months of difficult times” and “the great Russian propaganda machine tells me that Russia today is no longer an authoritarian state, but a totalitarian state, like the Soviet Union in the 1980s”. “If Putin breaks Ukraine, if he breaks us, our will to fight, to fight economically, he will advance, in a year or two, towards other objectives. It will advance on Helsinki, Vilnius, Warsaw, Bucharest, perhaps on Berlin. That in Germany one thinks about it well .