Poland's PM suggests Russia is 'hostile regime' after Navalny case

WARSAW, Sept 3- Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki suggested on Thursday that Russia was a “hostile regime” after Germany said that Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a Soviet-style Novichok nerve agent. Morawiecki’s tweet did not specifically name Russia, but referred to events in which Moscow is accused of involvement, like the…

WARSAW, Sept 3 (Reuters) – Polish Prime Minister Mateusz

Morawiecki suggested on Thursday that Russia was a “hostile

regime” after Germany said that Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny

was poisoned with a Soviet-style Novichok nerve agent.

“Georgia 2008. Crimea & Donbas since 2014. MH17. Salisbury2018. Berlin 2019. Navalny 2020. How many wake-up calls do weneed to finally realize that we are dealing with a hostileregime?” Morawiecki said on Twitter.

“Dialogue, partnership, compromise – these are alien wordsto them. Time to draw conclusions.”

Morawiecki’s tweet did not specifically name Russia, butreferred to events in which Moscow is accused of involvement,like the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine or the poisoningof former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury.

Germany has said Navalny was poisoned with Novichok, achemical that was specifically banned this year by theOrganization for the Prohibition of ChemicalWeapons.

Moscow has denied involvement in the incident and theRussian foreign ministry said Germany’s assertion was not backedby evidence, complaining about the way Germany had chosen torelease information about Navalny.

Warsaw’s relations with Moscow, which supplies Poland withoil and gas, have been strained by Russia’s annexation of Crimeain 2014 and differences over a 2010 plane crash in Russia thatkilled Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 95 other people.

In August, Morawiecki said Russia should not intervenemilitarily in Belarus under the pretence of restoring orderthere.

Another Polish official said this month that if the West didnot react to the Belarus crisis, then Russia would expand the”Brezhnev Doctrine”, a Soviet-era foreign policy under whichMoscow intervened in the domestic affairs of its East Europeansatellites at times of unrest against repressive Communist rule.

(Reporting by Agnieszka Barteczko and Alan CharlishEditing by Mark Heinrich)