In today’s Rozmowa Piaseckiego on TVN24, Minister in the Chancellery of the President Marcin Przydacz surprisingly praised Jacek Najder, Poland’s permanent representative to NATO, and earlier a key official in Donald Tusk’s first government. Speaking about Ambassador Najder, Przydacz said that he is in a “very uncomfortable situation” and praised his “good will and competence.” These words are astonishing, considering the compromising role Najder played in the policy of reset with Russia and in the tragic events following the Smolensk disaster.
As deputy foreign minister in the PO-PSL government, Jacek Najder was one of the central figures responsible for relations with Russia during the reset. His name is inseparably linked with a series of shameful omissions and decisions.
A mistake he had to apologize for
The most dramatic episode in Jacek Najder’s career was his role in the identification process of the Smolensk disaster victims. As deputy foreign minister at the time, he was in Moscow and signed the protocol identifying the body of Poland’s President-in-exile Ryszard Kaczorowski. As it later turned out, the identification was wrong. In October 2012, when DNA tests confirmed that another person had been buried in the president’s grave in the Temple of Divine Providence, Najder publicly apologized to the family. He explained himself by referring to… the difficult working conditions.
Cables with false narratives
Najder’s activity after April 10, 2010 also included transmitting diplomatic cables with information coming from the Russian side. Through him, Poland received claims that later turned out to be elements of Russian disinformation. One of them was the false claim about General Andrzej Błasik’s presence in the cockpit of the Tu-154M, suggesting pressure on the pilots. Later transcript analyses did not confirm this version. Najder’s name also appears in the context of a cable from Moscow regarding Akhmed Zakayev, the Chechen politician whose extradition was demanded by Russia. The MFA (MSZ), where Najder worked at the time, took an active part in attempts to discredit Zakayev – at the request of Lavrov’s people.
In June 2010 – two months after Smolensk – Najder drafted a report which spoke of Russia’s good will toward Poland. It read, among other things:
Minister R. Sikorski pointed out the importance of the “psychological breakthrough” that occurred in Polish-Russian relations after the crash of the presidential Tu-154 near Smolensk […] Minister R. Sikorski noted the more pragmatic policy recently pursued by Russia toward its neighbors, manifested among other things in its efforts to demarcate borders with Ukraine and Belarus. In response, S. Ryabkov emphasized that Russia seeks to improve relations with all Western countries, including Poland. It no longer wishes to divide states into different groups.”
A disgraceful meeting with Lavrov
The most striking example of submissiveness to Russia was the unprecedented meeting of Polish ambassadors held on September 2, 2010 in Warsaw. The guest of honor at this meeting, devoted to the “New era of Poland-Russia relations,” was Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. He delivered a lecture to the heads of Polish diplomatic missions, which Russian media described as an “unimaginable event until now.” Astonishingly, it was Jacek Najder who was tasked with writing the speech for then-Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski on this occasion.
The opposition at the time had no illusions about the nature of this event. Prof. Karol Karski of PiS commented: “It would have been different if it had been a representative of a country belonging to the EU or NATO, but not the foreign minister of a state from the opposing military bloc.” Meanwhile, Prof. Ryszard Legutko described Sikorski’s decision as “indefensible” and “offensive to our ambassadors.”
Dialogue in the shadow of submissiveness
After December 2010, Najder, together with the aforementioned Russian deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov, known as a Kremlin “hawk,” conducted the so-called strategic dialogue on security issues. It was specifically the Polish-Russian “working consultations in the field of security policy.”