Later this week, US President Donald Trump will meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Among the topics of their talks will be, among others, the war in Ukraine. According to Deputy Minister of National Defence Cezary Tomczyk, if the negotiations end unfavourably for Kyiv, it will… be the fault of the president, who has been in office for less than a week.
On Friday, US President Donald Trump will meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin for the first time in his second term. The talks will take place at the Elmendorf-Richardson US military base in Anchorage, Alaska. As White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt announced, they will focus on ending the war in Ukraine.
Deputy Minister of National Defence Cezary Tomczyk commented on the upcoming event on Tuesday. “Today I am asking – and I believe this is fundamental from the point of view of our interests – where, on the matter of Ukraine and therefore on the matter of Poland’s national interest, is President Nawrocki?” he asked on Polsat News.
The Civic Coalition politician stated that Nawrocki is “the head of state, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, the man responsible for security also from the point of view of the division of competences when it comes to NATO-related matters”.
“If Ukraine is humiliated, if it is forced into some kind of capitulation, then first and foremost it will be a gigantic failure for the Republic of Poland (RP), and secondly a failure of President Nawrocki” – he fired back.
The host, Marcin Fijołek, pointed out that Nawrocki has been president for less than a week and expressed doubt whether he could be held responsible for such a long process. That did not convince Tomczyk. In response, he noted that Nawrocki had said he had good relations with the US.
Who is in charge of diplomacy?
Tomczyk’s statement is widely discussed online – not because the Deputy Defence Minister (MON) would attribute the outcome of a years-long conflict to a president who has been in office for just a few days, but rather because he contradicted Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Foreign Minister (MSZ) Radosław Sikorski, indicating that it is the president who is responsible for Poland’s diplomacy. His remark even puzzled Anna Żukowska from The Left.
“So is it the president who conducts foreign policy, or the government? Because if it’s the government, then what exactly would be the president’s failure?” – she wrote on platform X. There is no shortage of similar comments.
As for Nawrocki’s good relations with the US authorities, this was addressed by Law and Justice (PiS) MP Jan Kanthak.
“President Karol Nawrocki, in less than a month after taking office, will meet with the President of the United States. How many meetings have you had with our greatest ally? Because I have a feeling that Tusk, in four years, will not even get close to the US President” – he wrote.
Nawrocki’s meeting with Trump at the White House is scheduled for September 3.