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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
The presidential candidate supported by Poland’s main conservative opposition party has blamed the “European elites” – including current Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who he called “the butler of the European elites” – for causing the war in Ukraine.
Tusk himself hit back by accusing the candidate, Karol Nawrocki, and his backers in the Law and Justice (PiS) party, of promoting “the Kremlin’s narrative” that Europe and the West are to blame for the war.
Nawrocki oświadczył, że to Europa wywołała wojnę na Ukrainie. Jarosławie, to ostatni moment, aby zmienić kandydata. Chyba że narracja Kremla stała się oficjalną linią PiS.
— Donald Tusk (@donaldtusk) February 19, 2025
Speaking on the campaign trail on Tuesday, Nawrocki said that the recent Munich Security Conference and President Emmanuel Macron’s Ukraine summit in Paris showed the “crisis that the elites of the European Union are unfortunately in”.
“The chaos Europe is in today is caused by the decisions of the European elites towards Putin, which brought us war and Russia’s attack on Ukraine,” continued Nawrocki, who is technically a non-party candidate but whose campaign is supported by PiS, Poland’s largest opposition party.
“A pact with Putin was signed thanks to the European elites and the current prime minister of the Polish government, Donald Tusk,” he added, without specifying which pact he was referring to. “Europe has been bogged down for many years in subsidising Russia, which caused the war.”
PiS has long argued that many European countries, in particular Germany, were too friendly towards Russia and too willing to buy Russian gas, which in term helped Putin prepare for his invasion of Ukraine.
However, Nawrocki made clear his view “that it was Russia which started the war in Ukraine…[and] is the perpetrator”. But he added that “the attitude of the EU elites also contributed to the war”.
Nawrocki then warned that “we cannot allow those same elites to bring about the disintegration of the alliance with the United States”, which he pledged to protect as president. By contrast, “Tusk is the butler of the European elites and Rafał Trzaskowski the deputy butler”, he declared.
Trzaskowski is the presidential candidate of Tusk’s centrist Civic Coalition and is currently leading in the polls, on around 34%, ahead of Naworcki in second on around 24%. If no candidate wins over 50% of the vote in the first round on 18 May, the top two go into a second-round run-off.
Nawrocki warned on Tuesday that, if Trzaskowski wins, “Poland will lose its independence and will be reduced to the role of a political executor of the will of European elites”, reports news website Interia.
🔴 Europa jest dzisiaj w chaosie – Posłuchajcie @NawrockiKn 👇 #Nawrocki2025 pic.twitter.com/Xri2vj9rXx
— #Nawrocki2025 (@Nawrocki25) February 18, 2025
Nawrocki’s remarks were quickly condemned by figures from Poland’s ruling coalition, many of whom likened them to Russian propaganda that blames Europe and the West for causing the war in Ukraine.
On Wednesday evening, Tusk himself responded, writing on social media: “Nawrocki declared that Europe provoked the war in Ukraine. Jarosław [Kaczyński, leader of PiS], this is the last moment to change candidate. Unless the Kremlin’s narrative has become the official PiS line.”
Trzaskowski also commented on Wednesday, calling Nawrocki’s remarks “irresponsible” and “a threat to our interests”. He warned that such comments are regularly exploited by Russian propaganda.
Last month, Nawrocki declared that he “currently does not envision Ukraine in either the EU or NATO”. Those remarks also prompted criticism from the ruling coalition, as well as from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
"I currently do not envision Ukraine in either the EU or NATO," says the presidential candidate of Poland's conservative opposition PiS party.
He also pledged to veto bills ending the near-total abortion ban or introducing same-sex civil partnerships https://t.co/GNcXnAx5r0
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) January 9, 2025
Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
Main image credit: Mikołaj Bujak/IPN (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)
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.
