Reporters have discovered that a “thousands-strong” Ukrainian legion in Poland does not yet exist.
During the NATO public forum on July 11 in Washington DC, Polish foreign minister Radosław Sikorski said “several thousands of Ukrainians” had registered with the legion of Ukrainian volunteers to be trained in Poland, adding that “if every country had done that Ukraine would now have several additional brigades.”
But on September 9, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna (DGP), a Polish owned centre-right leaning daily, reported that although Poland had been ready to begin training volunteers from August 1, the Ukrainian side had not recruited any participants and that the legion “remained an idea that was just there on paper”.
The newspaper was told by its sources in the ministry of defence that Poland “does not have to prepare … for the training of potential Ukrainian volunteers as it has already trained 20,000 Ukrainian troops on its soil and is a leader in doing so in Europe.
DGP asked Poland’s foreign ministry about their boss’s claims that thousands of Ukrainians were joining a legion and was told: “we are leaving it to the ministry of defence to inform about the agreements and actions on this matter”.
The Polish ministry of defence however told DGP that “the responsibility for the organisation and recruitment is that of our Ukrainian partners” while the Ukrainian defence ministry did not respond to questions.
During his state visit in July his year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the setting up of the Ukrainian legion to be formed and then trained in Poland. The plan was to enable Ukrainian citizens who live in Poland to participate in the defence of their country. It was to be made up of Ukrainian volunteers from there and other European countries.
More than two months later, Ukraine has yet to begin the formal process of recruitment despite multiple media reports about the new legion. Vasil Zvarych, the then-Ukrainian ambassador, told the Ukrainian news agency Ukrinform: “We are concentrating on this project so that everything will be in place by the beginning of August.”
An unnamed Polish diplomatic source speculated that Sikorski may have either been “misled by the Ukrainians” or it was an instance of “wires getting crossed”, meaning the minister had misinterpreted ambassador Zvarych’s briefing for Ukrinform.
In that, the ambassador referred to enquiries from interested Ukrainians that he said had been received at Ukrainian consular outposts, rather than any formal registrations.
The source pointed to the fact that the Ukrainian ambassador had said that, in order to proceed with the project, a technical agreement describing the roles of Poland and Ukraine in the initiative had been required. That this was only signed on September 6 by Ukrainian deputy defence minister Ivan Havryluk during his visit to Poland, according to the source.
