“Ukraine is corrupt to the core,” says leading candidate for Polish ruling party

Ukraine is “corrupt to the core”, undemocratic and President Volodymyr Zelensky is a “hostage of oligarchs”, says a leading election candidate for Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party. He warns that Poland has been “too childish” in its policies towards its eastern neighbour.

Paweł Kukiz was recently named by PiS as the top candidate on its electoral list in the city of Opole. He is, though, not a member of the party and instead leads the small right-wing Kukiz’15 group, which since 2021 has been in an agreement to support the ruling party.

Speaking to broadcaster Polsat this week, Kukiz said that he “thinks Poles in general – not only the party in power, but also the media – make a mistake, treating Ukraine and Ukrainians as a nation that once had full democracy and was suddenly deprived of this democracy by the Russians”.

“No, this is a state corrupted to the core,” he declared, adding that “democracy is an unknown word in Ukraine” and Zelensky is largely held “hostage by Ukrainian oligarchs”.

Kukiz also called for a change in policy towards Ukraine by Poland. Warsaw has been one of Kyiv’s closest allies since Russia’s invasion, but Kukiz claims that its approach has been “too childish”.

“If we do not pursue a tough policy towards Ukraine while helping them within the limits of what is possible and logical, then sooner or later, we will be met with a tough policy on their part,” he said. “We did not keep in the back of our minds that they, like any country, will look after their own interests first.”

Kukiz’s comments come amid a recent period of tension between the two countries, in particular over Ukrainian grain imports, which Poland has unilaterally banned.

However, over the last week, both the Ukrainian and Polish governments have hinted that an agreement to end their dispute is close, and on Thursday Ukraine suspended its complaint against Poland at the World Trade Organisation.

Poland will hold parliamentary elections on 15 October, at which PiS is hoping to win an unprecedented third term in office. While the majority of candidates on its electoral lists come from the party itself, some are from allied groups such as Kukiz’15 and Sovereign Poland (Suwerenna Polska).

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Alicja Ptak

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