Poland is surprised with Zelenskyy’s criticism about insufficient aid – media
Pravda Ukraine
Witold Jurasz, columnist and journalist of the Polish Onet media outlet, states with reference to sources that the Polish delegation was surprised by the style of communication of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the negotiations in the city of Kyiv last week.
Source: European Pravda; column by Jurasz on the Onet website
Details: Reportedly, during the negotiations with the Polish delegation led by Polish Foreign Affairs Minister Radosław Sikorski, Zelenskyy allegedly accused Poland of insufficient support in Ukraine’s EU accession talks.
Zelenskyy also allegedly expressed his indignation that Poland did not supply Ukraine with enough military equipment because “it didn’t want to do it” (quote from the column) and did not down Russian missiles and drones while they were in the airspace of Ukraine.
Sikorski’s argument that Poland would not engage its air defence without coordinating it with NATO allegedly didn’t convince Zelenskyy.
The argument between the Poles and Zelenskyy was also caused by the Volyn Tragedy (massacres of Poles in the Volyn region during WW2). Zelenskyy allegedly said that Warsaw used this issue due to domestic policy. Sikorski’s argument that Ukraine should treat exhuming and burials as a Christian gesture, allegedly did not convince Zelenskyy.
“The participants of the conversation told Onet that at some point the atmosphere was so bad that one could even call it a scandal,” Jurasz notes. He states that the Lithuanian delegation led by Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis was also present, and it “did not try to support the Polish Minister”.
Ukrainian officials, with whom Onet got in touch, tried to present the conversation in a way to make Sikorski look guilty of the tense atmosphere, Jurasz says.
“The course of the meeting of the head of Polish diplomacy with the Ukrainian president shows that the relations between Warsaw and Kyiv are, sadly, in a critical state. Polish participants of the meeting were, to put it lightly, surprised by the style in which President Zelenskyy was communicating,” Jurasz says.
He also states that several Polish participants of the delegation tried to persuade him not to publish the column because “Polish-Ukrainian tension should not be discussed publicly”.
Background: Recently, European Pravda talked to Ukrainian and Polish historians about the problems in bilateral relations between Kyiv and Warsaw and the ways to solve them.
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