Polish government appoints new “head” of US embassy as president refuses to name him ambassador

Poland’s government has named a new figure to head the Polish embassy in the United States. However, he will not formally be an ambassador because President Andrzej Duda, an ally of the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, has refused to sign off on his nomination.

The appointment of Bogdan Klich, a senator from the main ruling Civic Platform (PO) party, has also been criticised by PiS figures given that he has strongly criticised Donald Trump in the past.

“Senator Bogdan Klich will soon arrive in Washington and take over the management of the Polish embassy,” foreign minister Radosław Sikorski told broadcaster RMF.

“He probably won’t be an ambassador because the president announced that he won’t sign off [on nominations] for anyone, especially not for Senator Klich, but he will become the head of the mission,” added Sikorski.

Last month, Duda announced that, while he remains in office, he will not sign off on the government’s nomination for Klich to become ambassador.

He noted that Klich served as defence minister at the time of the Smolensk disaster, when a Polish military plane crashed in Russia, killing then-president Lech Kaczyński and 95 others.

“Radosław Sikorski and [Prime Minister] Donald Tusk want to send as Polish ambassador to the US, to the world’s largest military power, where the safety and health of the president is in a category unimaginable to Poles, a man who was defence minister when the president of Poland died in a plane crash in a military plane,” said Duda.

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“It will be one big joke,” added the president, speaking to TV Republika. “I will never agree to this, as long as I am the president for another fourteen months I will never sign this ambassadorial nomination. I will not sign it because I will not compromise Poland.”

However, speaking to RMF, Sikorski said that “if PiS has proof of Senator Klich’s participation in the Smolensk attack, he will not go to the US but to jail”.

PiS has long claimed that the former PO-led government was responsible for causing the Smolensk crash, or at least helped Russia cover up the true causes. However, despite spending eight years and tens of millions of zloty reinvestigating the crash, PiS has failed to offer proof supporting its claims of a conspiracy.

Polish ambassadors are nominated by the foreign ministry but formally appointed by the president. Duda’s current – and final – term in office lasts until the middle of next year.

For now, Klich will hold the title of chargé d’affaires at the embassy in Washington. However, in the absence of an ambassador, he will, in practice, head the mission. He will take over from Marek Magierowski, Duda’s former spokesman, who has served as ambassador in Washington since 2021.

A number of senior PiS figures today criticised the appointment of Klich, noting that in the past he has called Trump – who may soon return as president – an “unbalanced politician who doesn’t respect democracy” and whose “presidency ended in shameful riots”.

Speaking last month, Duda also pledged not to approve the government’s nomination of Ryszard Schnepf – who served as ambassador to the US from 2012 to 2016 – as ambassador to Italy.

As justification, Duda noted that “Schnepf’s father, together with the Soviets, participated in the Augustów Roundup against Poles”, referring to a Soviet operation in 1945 to eliminate Polish anti-communist partisans. Schnepf’s father, Maksymilian, commanded a military unit that supported the operation.

Earlier this month, the Gazeta Wyborcza daily reported that PiS had been putting pressure on Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – whose Brothers of Italy party is allied with PiS in the European Parliament – not to accept Schnepf as ambassador.

Subsequently, Sikorski confirmed in an interview with broadcaster TVN that he had “looked into this rumour and unfortunately it is confirmed”.

In March, Duda criticised the government’s plans to replace over 50 ambassadors appointed under the former PiS administration. Recent weeks have also seen a dispute between him and the government over Poland’s ambassador to NATO, who Tusk this week claimed should not have received security clearance.

Main image credit: Slawomir Kaminski / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.