On the same day as he took a lead in polls, Polish PiS presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki pledged to block Ukraine’s entry into NATO.
According to latest polls, Nawrocki now enjoys a definite if narrow 2 to 3 percentage point lead over his rival Rafał Trzaskowski, who has the backing of PM Donald Tusk’s centre-left government.
With the second round of the election slightly over a week away on June 1, Nawrocki appeared May 21 on the YouTube channel of his defeated right-wing Confederation party rival Sławomir Mentzen, who polled 15 percent in the first round May 18.
Nawrocki agreed to support Mentzen’s position on Ukraine, that Poland should not send troops to the country and that it should block its bid to join NATO.
“It would be dangerous for Ukraine to be allowed into NATO as it would mean that the whole of the alliance would straight away be in a war with Russia”, said Nawrocki.
Nawrocki also expressed doubts whether Ukraine was even ready for EU accession, because of what he called its refusal to face up to its Second World War history, and its high levels of official corruption.
In response, Poland’s foreign minister Radosław Sikorski criticised Nawrocki for “undermining national unity in support for Ukraine”.
“If Nawrocki doesn’t understand that Ukraine’s membership of NATO is in Poland’s interests, he shouldn’t be president,” Sikorski told state-owned broadcaster Polskie Radio.
Sikorski added past Polish presidents from Nawrocki’s own political camp, such as Lech Kaczyński and Andrzej Duda, had backed Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations.
He added in 2008, “with Lech Kaczyński, shoulder to shoulder, we fought at the NATO summit in Bucharest for a membership plan for Ukraine.”
In fact, the Tusk government had resisted Kaczyński’s push for Ukrainian membership of NATO, as it conflicted with Warsaw’s policy of improving relations with Russia.
Tusk himself criticised Nawrocki for his position on Ukraine, saying it was “aligned with the Kremlin’s demands”, and asked whether Nawrocki would in turn support “Ukraine’s capitulation and division”.
Nawrocki dismissed the suggestion he was pro-Russian and revealed, in his YouTube conversation with Mentzen, he had been granted a private firearms licence precisely because he was on Russia’s wanted list.
This was because as head of the Polish Institute of Remembrance he had ordered the taking down of Soviet monuments in Poland, he said.
Nawrocki, who is not a member of the PiS but has received its backing, also used his meeting with Mentzen to distance himself from PiS policies which proved unpopular with Confederation party supporters and the electorate in general.
Nawrocki agreed with Mentzen the PiS had been too willing to admit legal migrants from Middle Eastern and African countries, and said its tax reforms had caused problems for entrepreneurs.
He also distanced himself from the previous PiS government’s initial support for the EU’s Green Deal.
The policies, which the Confederation party attacked, played a contributing role in the PiS’s failure to win a parliamentary election in 2023.
