Millions of Ukrainians living in Poland could become a key issue in next year’s parliamentary election as the mood on the political right shifts against Kyiv.
Wojciech Kość
PiS keeps attacking Tusk and the government for being too soft on Ukraine. The party is also pledging a harder line on Kyiv if it returns to power next year.
“Polish society is being cured of a certain idealism, the idea that something can be built with Ukraine on the basis of partnership. We can see that this is not possible. So it should be only hard, pragmatic interests from now on,” said Mularczyk, the MEP.
Tempers are also fraying in Kyiv.
Zelenskyy this week announced the creation of a national pantheon to honor Ukraine’s heroes. Part of the message sounded as if it were aimed at Warsaw.
“The names of all the heroes who, throughout the centuries and eras, fought for Ukraine and inspired Ukraine will be united and forever inscribed in our history … no one will ever tell us how to live, how to speak, whom to love, whom to be grateful to, or which heroes to honor,” Zelenskyy said.
Budanov called the fight between Warsaw and Kyiv “a serious mistake,” but warned that “there will be more to come, as they say, if everyone doesn’t slow down a bit.”
Tadeusz Iwański, head of the Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova desk at the state-run Eastern Studies Center think tank, said narrowing the gap between the Polish and Ukrainian perspectives will be extremely difficult.
“Zelenskyy has withstood enormous Russian pressure, and enormous pressure from Trump, who tried to break him and force him into various concessions. So this pressure from Poland — for him to move on the UPA — barely registers by comparison,” Iwański told POLITICO.
