Why Poland may have most to gain from a Russian defeat in Ukraine

Western democracies want Ukraine to win - but are they all happy for Europe's centre of gravity to migrate eastward?

If the outcome of the war could be determined by the toss of a coin, the camps would be clear: democracies would want Ukraine to win, autocracies would want it to lose. But real-world political outcomes are not so binary. They typically fall on a spectrum between annihilation and total victory. This leaves the democracies divided into at least three camps: the English-speaking, the western European and the eastern European minus Hungary. What Putin calls the collective west" all want Ukraine to win. But not necessarily to the same extent.

For Poland and the Baltic countries the matter is simple. They want Ukraine's victory to be unequivocal. The advantages would be both material and psychological.

Anna Gromada is a social scientist and co-founder of the Warsaw-based Kalecki Foundation thinktank.

Krzysztof Zeniuk is an economist