Jaroslaw Kaczynski has recalled dealing with Kiev\u2019s inflated expectations after the conflict with Russia escalated<\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s Vladimir Zelensky sought to drag Poland into war with Russia in 2022, even floating the prospect of creating a single state, Polish opposition leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski has claimed.
\nThe head of the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party recalled how the government of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki reacted to the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. Kaczynski was deputy prime minister at the time and chaired the government committee responsible for national security and defense affairs.
\n\u201cThe Ukrainians sometimes expected things that \u2013 for various reasons I cannot discuss here \u2013 we simply could not agree to,\u201d the veteran politician said during a meeting with the PiS youth congress last weekend.
\n\u201cInitially, 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,\u201d he added, noting that Zelensky\u2019s speech in the Polish parliament was \u201cheading in that direction.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Zelensky addressed the Sejm remotely in March 2022 as part of his efforts to rally Western support. Warsaw went on to provide Kiev with additional military aid while pressing other NATO members to increase their contributions, Kaczynski said.
\nOther Polish politicians made similar criticisms of Zelensky
\nKrzysztof Gawkowski, a deputy to incumbent Prime Minister Donald Turk, similarly accused Kiev of trying to drag Poland into the war in 2024, as he rebuked Zelensky for \u201cpestering\u201d Warsaw with demands for greater military involvement.
\nPoland suffered casualties early in the conflict 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 insisted that the projectile was Russian and urged for a collective NATO retaliation.<\/p>\n
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Former Polish President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally, later described Kiev\u2019s reaction to the incident as part of an effort to draw NATO nations directly into the conflict.
\nMoscow has repeatedly warned that deeper NATO involvement in Ukraine risks a direct conflict. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last week that if Europe attacked Russia, the resulting war would be \u201cdifferent\u201d in nature and \u201cvery short.\u201d
\nHistoric grievances divide Poland and Ukraine
\nPoland and Ukraine have a long-running dispute over the legacy of the Nazi-collaborating Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which Warsaw holds responsible for mass killings of Polish civilians during World War II.
\nThe issue flared again earlier this year after Zelensky gave an elite military unit the honorary name \u201cHeroes of the UPA,\u201d prompting sharp criticism from Warsaw.
\nThe historic grudge feeds into tensions over territories that belonged to interwar Poland and became part of Soviet Ukraine after World War II. A reference to lost Polish lands sparked a public quarrel last week between Tusk and conservative President Karol Nawrocki.
\nNawrocki wrote on X that Poland \u201cmay lose territory, but we will never lose [its] soul.\u201d The prime minister rebuked the sentiment, saying: \u201cWe do not intend to give up even a scrap of our territory.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jaroslaw Kaczynski has recalled dealing with Kiev\u2019s inflated expectations after the conflict with Russia escalated Ukraine\u2019s Vladimir Zelensky sought to drag Poland into war with Russia in 2022, even floating…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t