The leader of Poland’s Law and Justice party, Jarosław Kaczyński, has said that the Ukrainian authorities at the start of the full-scale war may have intended to draw Poland in.
He made the remarks while speaking at a youth congress in Augustów, Rzeczpospolita reports.
According to Kaczyński, at the initial stage of the war Ukraine expected Poland to take steps that Warsaw could not agree to.
“All sorts of questions often arose about whether to do something or not. Ukrainians sometimes expected things that we, for various reasons — although I cannot discuss them — could not agree to. Usually we managed to find a solution that maintained good Polish-Ukrainian relations,” Kaczyński said.
He added that relations later began to develop differently. “Later everything began to develop in a completely different way, but it must be stated clearly that the Ukrainians changed their minds. I think that at first they had a somewhat strange idea that they would draw us into this war, even on the basis of creating a single state. Zelenskyy’s speech in the Sejm was precisely in that direction,” the PiS leader said.
Jarosław Kaczyński also noted that Ukraine may have misjudged Poland’s capabilities at the initial stage of the Russian invasion: “Poland, even if it had been a very bellicose country, in practice had virtually no real armed forces. It could not enter the war.”
According to Kaczyński, Poland’s NATO membership may also have played a role in Ukraine’s calculations: “In addition, there was also the issue of joining NATO. They probably thought such goals could be achieved, but I am not sure about that; historians will determine it.”
Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s address to the Sejm, mentioned by Jarosław Kaczyński, took place on 11 March 2022 via video link.
In it, the President of Ukraine thanked Poland for its assistance, spoke of an “extraordinarily strong alliance” between Ukraine and Poland and unity between the two nations. At the same time, he noted: “Today we are fighting so that such an evil time does not come for the Baltic states and for Poland.” In other words, there was no mention of a single state or of drawing Poland into the war.