“Don’t be Chamberlain of this war,” Polish FM tells president after Ukraine “compromise” comments

Keep our news free from ads and paywalls by making a donation to support our work!

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.

Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, has warned President Andrzej Duda, who is an opponent of the government, not to become a modern-day Neville Chamberlain by appeasing Russia.

His remarks came after Duda called on Ukraine to make concessions to bring an end to the war. Speaking with Euronews on Thursday, the president said that any peace deal “has to be a compromise”, meaning “Ukraine will also have to step down in some sense”.

Sharing a link to a report on the remarks, Sikorski wrote on X: “I advise President Duda against volunteering to be the Chamberlain of this war.”

That was a reference to the British prime minister of the 1930s, who infamously followed a policy of appeasement towards Hitler, hoping it would help avoid war. The failings of the strategy were exposed when Nazi Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, setting off the Second World War

In his interview with Euronews, Duda also expressed his “belief that President Donald Trump, with his determination, can bring this war to an end”. The Polish president, a conservative, has long been a close ally of Trump.

By contrast, the Polish government, a more liberal coalition ranging from left to centre right, is regularly in conflict with Duda and has also been cooler in its relations with the Trump administration.

Speaking to Gazeta Wyborcza, a leading Polish daily, Sikorski said that he hoped Duda would raise the issue of Ukraine with Trump if they meet during a visit to the Vatican for the funeral of Pope Francis.

The foreign minister also noted that, during the first years of Russia’s war in Ukraine, much of Europe had still not “taken defence seriously”. But now, “the fear of Putin and Trump at the same time had made Europeans mobilise”.

“I thank President Trump for finally waking up the European pacifists from their too-long civilisational sleep,” continued Sikorski. He then expressed his belief that, “by the end of the decade, we [Europe] will be ready to face Putin” militarily.

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: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland/Flickr (under CC BY-NC 2.0)

Alicja Ptak

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