I think there’s a concern Putin would move against the Baltic states or one of the other for Soviet bloc countries. But that’d involve NATO. Poland may not want the Bear on their doorstep in light of prior history.
Russia knows the Western countries (Baltics, Finland, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Czech Republic) are gone from its sphere of influence forever. Expect Russia to exert pressure on Orthodox countries in NATO with Romania being the first. Russia still considers the Orthodox civilization to be in its sphere of influence. Along with the large Russian ethnic concentration in Donbas/Crimea, that's why Russia took direct action in Ukraine.
“Poland may not want the Bear on their doorstep in light of prior history.”
Russia also doesn’t want to be on Poland’s border, as shown by Medvedev yesterday on his map of the future Ukraine.
NATO is going to drawn in with the unleashing of long range missiles and aircraft against Russia.
The US and Israel both have similar doctrines to Russia and China, which is any proxy using another countries equipment to attack will trigger a response to the country that provided the weapons.
Trump overplayed his hand. The Russians gave him the benefit of a doubt when standing down against NATOs missiles last October under Biden. Now Trump has decided to pursue the Biden missiles into Russia.
We are now in WWIII time. Russia will most likely hit NATO and US facilites across EUrope. They may knock out all the Romanian and Polish missile base infrastructure in a first strike as a warning to further missiles; accompanied by a speical strike package for Ukraine that will leave the world shocked when the Radiation doesn’t clear.
Poland and the Baltics are militarizing their borders that touch Russia or Belarus.