Przemysław Czarnek is the conservative opposition’s prime ministerial candidate ahead of fall 2027’s next Sejm elections. His words therefore carry immense weight and reverberate throughout the nation. That’s why it’s incredibly important to pay attention to what he just alleged about Zelensky amidst the Volhynia Genocide dispute’s latest phase sparked by Zelensky glorifying the OUN-UPA culprits at the state level. The most scandalous part is that Zelensky is serving Russia’s interests on this issue.
His logic is that Russia is the only one that benefits from Poles and Ukrainians being at odds, which wouldn’t have happened had Zelensky not glorified the Volhynia Genocide’s culprits. It was recently explained here how Putin doesn’t benefit from the latest phase of this dispute since Poland is unlikely to cut off aid to Ukraine, both its own and the West’s. That said, Czarnek is correct that the deterioration of people-to-people ties – due to coordinated Ukrainian troll attacks against Poles – surely pleases Russia.
He made two other important points too. One of them was that Zelensky is only still in power due to Poland’s diplomatic offensive during the early days of the large-scale hostilities whereby it successfully rallied the West behind Ukraine while Russian forces were still right outside the capital. That’s a valid point that was earlier elaborated on here in summer 2024. Czarnek therefore considers it to be an act of the highest ingratitude for him to then glorify the Volhynia Genocide’s culprits.
The other point that Czarnek made was that Zelensky’s renaming of an elite commando unit in honor of “the heroes of UPA”, the OUN’s armed group that directly carried out the grisly murder of over 100,000 Poles, is also an act of extreme disloyalty to the Ukrainian nation. He didn’t expand on this point, but it can be reasonably assumed that he was implying that they deserve better than to glorify and thus be associated with fascist war criminals. A lot of people the world over, including in the West, would agree.
Altogether, the gist of Czarnek’s response to Zelensky’s decision to radically escalate the Volhynia Genocide dispute is that he’s working against the interests of his own nation, Poland, and the West as a whole by at minimum inflicting possibly irreparably damage to Ukraine’s reputation in Poles’ eyes. As Newsweek recently had to be reminded, “Poland Is One Of Ukraine’s Biggest Benefactors, Not It’s ‘Biggest Problem’”, with Polish spending on Ukraine and its refugees reaching 4.91% of its GDP.
Poland is trying to revive its long-lost Great Power status as explained here, which Russia views as a threat, albeit not as big as the one posed by Germany’s remilitarization. Be that as it may, Germany’s reported plans to resume talks with Russia together with France and the UK could lead to a partial rapprochement once the conflict ends. In that case, Nord Stream II might be reopened (but under US control) and Germany, its new Ukrainian junior partner, and Russia could all team up against Poland.
That worst-case scenario might only materialize if Zelensky’s keeps serving Russia’s interests as Czarnek argued that he’s doing through his latest moves. It’s therefore imperative that Poland coerces Zelensky into reversing course on this issue as well as replacing Germany with Poland as Ukraine’s top strategic partner behind the US. If Poland fails to do so, then it mustn’t delay contingency planning for the aforesaid scenario, which could be set into motion by Ukraine scapegoating Poland for its loss to Russia.
