EXCLUSIVE: Poland’s Prime Minister’s Analysis of the War

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: So, we are 35, 36 days into this war. You are a front-line state in every form of that word, NATO, plus a huge border with Ukraine. How do you assess the state of the war right now?

MATEUSZ MORAWIECKI, POLISH PRIME MINISTER: I see the Russian troops regrouping, reorganizing. I think that they will try to surround the Ukrainian forces quite soon in the Donbass region in particular. And then, having captured one-third of the land of Ukraine, they will want to probably negotiate from this very, very strong position. The Ukrainians are fighting with lion hearts. They are very brave people. They want to defend universal values. They want to defend freedom and democracy. This is why we are helping them. Poland is really — as you said, indeed, on the very first line, helping Ukraine in terms of humanitarian crisis, but also in terms of delivering defensive weapons.

AMANPOUR: I just want to pin you down first on your analysis on the battleground and then we will go into the other points you very, very legitimately raise. You think that’s what the Russians want to do? President Putin has announced today that he wants 134,000 to be drafted into his army. It’s not doing well on the battlefield yet. Do you think — or how long do you think it would take him to do what you said, take a third of the country, essentially, and negotiate it from a strong hand, which most analysts don’t believe he has right now, that strong hand?

MORAWIECKI: Well, I wish that Ukraine defends its border and that there is no one Russian soldier on the Ukrainian soil. Having said that, we have to be in a hurry. We have to help Ukrainians to defend their country as quickly as possible, because our days is their hours. Our weeks is their days. They need weapon here and now. Why is that? Russia is a very big country, very big in terms of lots of commodities, raw materials, resources, three times bigger, three-and-a-half times bigger in terms of population than Ukraine. They have really very big army. And this is why they can again and again regroup, reorganize and supplement army with the new troops. And even with the very brave and courageous fight of the Ukrainian people, they are more and more exhausted with every day. So I’m going to make an appeal to the — all the Americans who helped Ukraine to defend their freedom so fantastically. Act quickly.