Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski has proposed ending welfare payments for Ukrainian men of military age in Europe in order to encourage them to join the army in their country, the statement was made at the annual Yalta European Strategy conference in Kyiv over the weekend.
“Stop paying these social security contributions to people eligible for Ukrainian military service. There should be no financial incentive to avoid military service in Ukraine. It is not a human right to be paid to avoid military service, to defend your country. We in Poland do not do this. There are no social security contributions, and if we did, we would have a major political problem in our country. This is something that could be done to help Ukraine’s war effort.” said the Polish Foreign Minister.
Kyiv is seeking to replenish the ranks of its army after more than two and a half years of a full-scale attack by Russia, whose better-equipped forces are on the offensive in eastern Ukraine.
Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees have been living in European countries since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022. Some of them are men who fled Ukraine illegally to avoid being drafted, despite a ban on leaving the country for men of fighting age, with a few exceptions.
According to Ukrainian estimates, there are one million Ukrainian men of military age living abroad, including 300,000 in Poland.
Airspace violations in Latvia and Romania
On September 8, two NATO members said Russian drones had violated their airspace: one reportedly entered Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia.
Drone Enters Romanian Territory as Moscow Strikes “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, Romania’s national defense ministry reported. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 fighter jets to monitor its airspace and sent warning messages to residents of two eastern regions of the country.
Latvian Defense Minister Andris Sprūds said a Russian drone had crashed near the town of Rezekne the day before and had probably strayed into Latvia from neighboring Belarus.
Rezekne, which has a population of more than 25,000, is located some 55 kilometers west of Russia and about 75 kilometers from Belarus, a close ally and dependent on the Kremlin.
Mr Sikorski said the money could be spent on preventing such airspace violations, which would help both Ukraine and Europe. “As you know, a large part of Russian missiles and drones are disappearing”he said. “The Russians are losing control of them. As has already been said, even the Belarusians must bring them down.”
Nuclear risks
Mr Sikorski also raised the risk of Russian drones hitting Ukrainian nuclear power plants. “We know what happens when a nuclear power plant explodes in Ukraine. The whole of Europe has a problem. So I say we could help Ukraine by strengthening the protection of Ukrainian power plants against air attacks.”
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and has previously been threatened by Russian attacks.
During a tour of the plant earlier this month, the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, Rafael Mariano Grossi, described the situation at the plant as “very fragile”.
The Zaporizhzhia power plant, which came under Russian control following its full-scale invasion, came under artillery fire in the region that damaged access to electricity, according to its operator Energoatom, which accused Russia of being behind the attacks.
Analysts say an explosion at the Zaporizhzhia plant would produce radiation and likely trigger panic, but the radiation risk beyond the immediate blast zone would be relatively low and not on the scale of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
