Przemysław Czarnek, the prime ministerial candidate of Poland’s conservative “Law & Justice” (PiS) opposition party ahead of fall 2027’s next Sejm elections, unexpectedly called on the EU to stop funding Ukrainian arms for now till the country “enters the path of pro-human values.” This is a reference to Zelensky’s state-level glorification of the Volhynia Genocide’s OUN-UPA culprits that prompted President Karol Nawrocki, nominally independent but allied with PiS, to revoke Poland’s highest honor from him.
The spiraling dispute has thus far seen a senior Ukrainian sergeant threaten Poland with drone strikes, Ukraine renege on its drones-for-MiGs deal with Poland, Ukraine move ahead with its fascist “national pantheon”, Budanov compare Poland to Russia, and Poles wake up to the challenge posed by Ukraine. In fact, “Public Pressure Is Pushing Poland’s Ruling Liberals To Harden Their Approach To Ukraine”, but Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his ruling liberal coalition won’t go as far as what Czarnek proposed.
Tusk condemned Czarnek’s words as an “idiotic” and “dangerous” way to appeal to “anti-Ukrainian sentiment”, later posting that “Russia couldn’t have dreamed up a better candidate for prime minister than Czarnek”, which alludes to his coalition’s false claims about the opposition being Putin’s puppets. Even PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński criticized Czarnek by reaffirming PiS’ support for arming Ukraine after giving €3 billion in arms to it from 2022-2023 and said that party leadership will soon clarify his words.
The larger context concerns the growing awareness among the public that Poland, specifically then-ruling PiS, could have preemptively averted Ukraine’s German-backed descent into an indisputably anti-Polish state by attaching political strings to its military aid from day one of the large-scale conflict. Accordingly, some realized that “Poland Could Quickly Denazify Ukraine Without Firing A Single Shot But Tusk Refuses To Do So”, namely by severing Ukraine’s Polish logistical lifeline till it complies.
In parallel, publicly financed pollster CBOS shared data showing that PiS (23.6%) could form a coalition with the Confederation (18.7%) and Confederation of the Polish Crown (KKP, 9.6%) libertarian-nationalist (populist in American political parlance) opposition parties. Given PiS’ decline and Confederation’s rise, it’s possible that Confederation could even become the senior partner by fall 2027’s next Sejm elections. Both populist opposition parties favor a harder line towards Ukraine, which Czarnek is now emulating.
If Czarnek is coerced by Kaczyński into backtracking, then more disgruntled PiS voters might shift to Confederation, thus advancing the aforesaid trend. By the time fall 2027 arrives, Confederation and KKP might attract the majority of voters who’ve soured on Ukraine while PiS could get the moderately critical ones, thus leaving today’s liberal coalition with the Ukrainian-friendly minority. If Czarnek stands strong, however, then PiS might still have a chance to be the senior partner in a coalition with the populists.
Regardless of whatever he does, him calling on the EU to stop funding Ukrainian arms till Zelensky abandons his policy of glorifying the OUN-UPA at the state level shows that PiS fears Confederation’s potential rise as the country’s top opposition party, ergo why he’s emulating their hard line on Ukraine. It also signifies his belief that enough voters have already soured on Ukraine that such a policy is now truly popular. The spiraling Polish-Ukrainian dispute has therefore radically shifted Poles’ views on Ukraine.
