Ukraine made “mistake” summoning Polish ambassador over row, says Poland’s PM

Poland’s prime minister has criticised Ukraine’s strong reaction to a Polish official’s suggestion that Kyiv should show more appreciation for the help his country has provided during the war.

Meanwhile, a senior figure in Poland’s ruling party has warned that it will be “much more difficult for Poland to continue to support Ukraine” if there are such disputes between the allies.

Yesterday, Ukraine’s foreign ministry called in the Polish ambassador for talks in response to remarks by Marcin Przydacz, the head of Polish President Andrzej Duda’s international policy office, in which he suggested that Ukraine should “start appreciating” Poland’s support.

The Ukrainian foreign ministry called Przydacz’s remarks “unacceptable”. President Volodymyr Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff said they were “opportunistic”, “manipulative”, “treacherous”, and served Russia’s interests.

Yesterday evening, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki took to Twitter to criticise Ukraine’s actions.

“The summoning of the Polish ambassador – a representative of the country that was the only one left in Kyiv on the day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – to the Ukrainian foreign ministry should never have happened,” wrote Morawiecki.

“In international politics, in the face of an ongoing war, given the enormous support Poland has given Ukraine, such mistakes should not happen,” he added. “We will always defend Poland’s good name, its security, and the interests of any other country will never stand above the interests of Poland.”

Ukraine’s actions were also criticized by Radosław Fogiel, the head of the parliamentary foreign affairs committee, who before taking that role was the spokesman for Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party.

“Ukraine should be aware that it will be much more difficult for it to win sympathy from the West, but it will also be much more difficult for Poland to continue to support Ukraine, if there are such disputes,” said Fogiel in an interview with new website Wirtualna Polska.

“We will help Ukraine because it is in our interest, but at the same time we cannot allow a situation where Poland will be the one to bear an undue burden due to what is happening,” he added.

Fogiel pointed to rising support for parties in Poland that want to reduce the amount of help being given to Ukraine. While he did not mention any party by name, the far-right Confederation (Konfederacja) party – which has been critical of the high level of support given to Ukraine – has recently been rising in the polls.

Meanwhile, this afternoon deputy Polish foreign minister Paweł Jabłoński announced that they had held talks with the chargé d’affaires from Ukraine’s embassy in Warsaw.

“In our opinion, some of these statements by representatives of the Ukrainian authorities were inappropriate and unnecessary,” said Jabłoński, quoted by news service 300Polityka. “They were unnecessarily marked by bad emotions and expressed a position that, in our opinion, simply harms good relations.”

“Poland still wants to support Ukraine,” he added. “[But] we support Ukraine to the extent that it is in Poland’s interest…and we expect that there is also understanding from the Ukrainian side of our needs, of our perspective.”

Yesterday evening, Zelensky himself also commented on the dispute, noting that there have recently been “various signals that politics is sometimes trying to be above unity, and emotions are trying to be above the fundamental interests of nations”.

“We are grateful to every nation that helps,” he added. “We greatly appreciate the historical support of Poland, which together with us has become a real shield of Europe.”

“We will not allow any political instants to spoil the relations between the Ukrainian and Polish peoples, and emotions should definitely cool down,” he concluded.

Poland has been one of Ukraine’s closest allies since Russia launched its full-scale invasion last year. It has provided Kyiv with military, humanitarian and diplomatic support.

However, the two have also clashed in certain areas, including over imports of Ukrainian grain, which Poland banned earlier this year following protests by Polish farms, which said they were lowering prices on the market.

That ban was later given the EU’s blessing, but it expires on 15 September. Poland and four other eastern EU member states want to extend it but Ukraine has called for the resumption of exports.

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Main image credit: KPRM (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.