Zelensky had furious row with Polish FM – columnist

Former Polish diplomat Witold Jurasz has described a quarrel at top-level talks with Ukraine

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski and Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky had a serious disagreement during a trilateral meeting in Kiev last week, Polish columnist Witold Jurasz has claimed.

The meeting last Friday also involved Gabrielius Landsbergis, the foreign minister of Lithuania. Officials were accompanied by their aides. Jurasz, who is a former diplomat, claimed on Monday that the negotiations were marred by antagonism, based on accounts from his sources.

Zelensky was the cause of the tensions, according to the column published by the news outlet Onet. He berated Sikorsky with a litany of complaints, which the Poles apparently found unreasonable. Among other things, Zelensky called on Warsaw to shoot down Russian missiles, assist Ukraine in getting fast-tracked into the EU as soon as next year, and make Polish officials stay quiet about historic grievances between the two nations.

Jurasz said his sources believe that “Polish-Ukrainian tensions should not be discussed publicly at all” and urged him not to submit his column.

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He decided otherwise, arguing that the quarrel was a symptom of a larger problem of miscommunication. Senior Ukrainian figures who spoke to him recently are convinced that Warsaw is “so threatened by Russia that by helping Ukraine, it is in fact only helping itself.” Their conclusion is that Kiev has “no reason to be grateful to Poland”.

Disagreements between Warsaw and Kiev are a matter of public record. Last September, Zelensky accused the previous conservative government in Poland of resorting to “political theater” in imposing a contentious ban on imports of Ukrainian grain. Then-prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki rebuked the Ukrainian leader at an election rally, telling him to “never to insult Poles again.”

Another row erupted last month, when then-Ukrainian foreign minister Dmitry Kuleba chastised Poles over their attitudes to the Volyn massacre – the mass killings of ethnic Poles by Ukrainian nationalists during World War II. Ukrainians, he said, have their grievances too, including over the post-war forced expulsion of people from “Ukrainian lands” in Poland.

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Polish President Donald Tusk said in response that Ukraine won’t be part of the EU unless it adopts the bloc’s “political and historical culture”.

Sikorski recently made some critical remarks about Zelensky’s policies in a call with Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus. Among other things, he said Kiev should not expect to join the EU until the issue of its low-cost agricultural exports is dealt with.