Ukraine cannot be admitted to the European Union unless it completely abandons its current course, Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) party, wrote in a letter to party members. He stressed that if PiS returns to power, it will prevent Ukraine from joining the EU “while cultivating the cult of Bandera and other criminals, and glorifying the UPA and OUN.”
In the letter, dated July 1, the PiS chairman emphasized that “from the very beginning of Russia’s war against Ukraine, Poland and the Polish people have stood on the side of truth, independence, and Ukraine’s territorial integrity.”
He added that the PiS government led by Mateusz Morawiecki had undertaken “unprecedented measures, above all in the military sphere, but also diplomatically and humanitarianly.”
“During the first and most difficult phase of the war for Ukraine, we made an enormous contribution to saving the Ukrainian state from collapse. This is a great achievement of both the Polish nation and the PiS government,” Kaczyński wrote.
The PiS leader added that, regardless of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Poland had worked since 1991 to ensure that “the burden of history would not weigh down Polish-Ukrainian relations.” He argued that this policy “made profound sense, particularly from a geopolitical perspective, when the Ukrainian nation, in the modern sense of the term, was taking shape before our eyes, and it seemed that this process would lead our neighbors to reject everything in their past that was evil, criminal, and disgraceful.”
Kaczyński argued, however, that Poland’s policy toward Ukraine had not always been “clear-cut and consistent,” and claimed that “at a certain point, the Ukrainian elites were misled by Tusk’s pro-Ukrainian coalition.”
“After 2023, Polish-Ukrainian relations came to be dominated by a model, dictated to Tusk from Berlin, of increasingly subservient, one-sided submission to the interests—or even the whims—of our eastern neighbor,” the PiS leader wrote. He described the consequences of this policy as “catastrophic.”
According to Kaczyński, Poland and its citizens have borne—and continue to bear—”enormous financial costs” to sustain the Ukrainian state and its armed forces.
“Without extensive external support, including from Poland, Ukrainian taxpayers are unable to maintain their fighting army or ensure the basic functioning of their state,” he wrote.
Despite this, the letter states, “an extraordinarily brazen and contemptuous act took place when an important Ukrainian military unit—funded in part by Polish taxpayers—was named after exceptionally brutal and cruel murderers responsible for massacres of the Polish population in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.”
Kaczyński stressed that Poland “has no intention of interfering with Ukraine’s efforts to build its own national identity.” At the same time, he argued that Poland, “in its own interest, in the interest of Europe, and indeed in the interest of Christian civilization as a whole, cannot allow Banderism—one of the most criminal and inhumane ideologies, which today is being used to shape the consciousness of the Ukrainian nation—to enter this community.”
“Ukraine cannot be admitted to the European Union unless it completely abandons its current course,” Kaczyński wrote. Otherwise, he argued, the EU would face “destabilization and disintegration,” while Poland would suffer significant economic losses.
“Law and Justice declares to the Polish people: Ukraine, while honoring Bandera and other criminals and glorifying the UPA and OUN, will not enter the European Union. If we win the elections, we will certainly prevent this,” the PiS leader wrote.
He also called on PiS members to remain vigilant.
“We must already use every available means to block the Tusk government’s efforts to integrate Ukraine into the European Union on preferential terms,” Kaczyński wrote.
The PiS leader added that “no sovereign state can accept, even to the slightest degree, genocidal crimes committed against its own nation.” He said this is the reason for opposing “the current policy of the Ukrainian elites and the ideology of Banderism.”
“That does not mean, however, that we should adopt the anti-Christian logic of collective responsibility,” Kaczyński stressed.
He added that “not all Ukrainians bear moral responsibility for the crimes of the UPA, Bandera, and others.”
“Only those who regard these barbaric criminals as heroes carry that responsibility into the future,” Kaczyński concluded.