Conservative-nationalist Polish MEP Dominik Tarczynski, who cooperated closely with Trump’s 2024 campaign, confirmed that the returning president has received proof of top Polish politicians’ irresponsible past statements about him. Interested readers can reference Polish analyst Zygfryd Czaban’s thread on X here compiling the most provocative claims, which include Prime Minister Donald Tusk calling Trump a Russian agent and Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski smearing him as a proto-fascist.
Furthermore, Vice President-elect JD Vance called Tusk out for his authoritarian crackdown against the opposition early this year long before he became Trump’s running mate, so it can be taken for granted that the incoming administration already has negative views about the incumbent Polish one. This will certainly influence the political dynamics between them in spite of the shared geostrategic interests that bring their countries together. Trump might even go as far as vindictively bullying Tusk and Sikorski.
To that end, it can’t be ruled out that he’ll pressure Poland to take the lead in dispatching peacekeepers to Ukraine to patrol its side of the 800-mile demilitarized zone (DMZ) that the Wall Street Journal reported that he might propose as part of a compromise for ending the conflict. An unnamed member of his team was quoted by them as saying that “We are not sending American men and women to uphold peace in Ukraine. And we are not paying for it. Get the Poles, Germans, British and French to do it.”
The problem though is that Poland had already maxed out its pro bono military support for Ukraine by late August and instead offered it a military loan to order new equipment, and a reputable survey earlier this summer showed that 69% of Poles oppose dispatching troops to Ukraine in any capacity. An even more recent survey from a similarly reputable institution, this time a publicly financed one, drew attention to just how fed up Poles are becoming with Ukrainian refugees and the proxy war too.
It’ll therefore be an extremely hard sell for Tusk and Sikorski to convince their people that they now need to pony up more money for Ukraine, not to mention accepting the possible deployment of their troops to patrol a DMZ with Russia there, especially amidst their deteriorating political ties. Ukrainian ungratefulness for Poland expending a whopping 3.3% of its GDP in support of its cause thus far and the revival of the Volhynia Genocide dispute are most directly responsible for this development.
Relations have gotten so bad that Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski accused Zelensky of trying to provoke a Polish-Russian war just last week due to his demands that Poland intercept Russian missiles over Ukraine. If Trump successfully coerces Russia and Ukraine into reaching a compromise that includes the reported 800-mile DMZ that he won’t allow America to fund or patrol, then immense pressure would be placed on Poland as NATO’s frontline state and largest western neighbor to contribute instead.
Outgoing conservative-nationalist President Andrzej Duda is close friends with Trump, however, and he could therefore help patch over these problems during his reportedly impending meeting with the incoming American leader. Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz from the ruling liberal-globalist coalition expressed interest in deploying Polish peacekeepers to Ukraine as part of a NATO mission, but that would require Commander-in-Chief Duda’s approval, which he’ll likely discuss with Trump.
Trump is seen as the most pro-Polish US president ever after his administration encouraged Poland to embrace its envisaged regional leadership role under the former conservative-nationalist government. Even though the country is now led by liberal-globalists who literally hate him, he’ll probably still apply some of his aforesaid policy, albeit perhaps more aggressively in the sense of him publicly pressuring Poland to play a greater military role in post-conflict Ukraine due to his problems with Tusk and Sikorski.
In pursuit of that, he could dangle the carrot of symbolically including Poland in the Ukrainian endgame after Biden excluded it from last month’s Berlin Summit with the German, British, and French leaders, which could see him appealing to its elite’s ego by trumpeting their country’s future regional role. He might also hint at once again preferring Poland as the US’ top European partner over Germany, which German-backed Tusk might not be receptive to but which could still resonate widely across society.
Duda is already receptive to such narratives as proven by the foreign policy behavior of the former government that he represented, which has been in opposition since the ruling liberal-globalist coalition took power last December after that fall’s general elections. For his part, Kosiniak-Kamysz has generally continued the military dimension of their policies and also has politically self-serving interests in taking a different approach towards matters than Tusk and Sikorski at times.
If Duda, Kosiniak-Kamysz, and Trump all agree that Poland should take the lead in contributing to a hypothetical post-conflict peacekeeping mission in Ukraine (whether under NATO’s aegis, the EU’s, or a “coalition of the willing”), then immense pressure would fall on Tusk and Sikorski to go along with this. Even though the public is strongly against it, they’re also very pro-American too, so their opinion could change depending on the interplay between those three aforementioned figures and the other two.
Tusk and Sikorski might also be pressured to agree to this even if public opinion doesn’t come around, which could worsen their coalition’s standing in voters’ eyes ahead of next year’s presidential election, thus facilitating Duda’s replacement with a fellow conservative-nationalist instead of a liberal-globalist. Trump will never forget what Tusk and Sikorski said about him, and he’s not one to forgive his enemies, so it’s possible that he’ll try to throw a wrench in their plans to replace Duda through these means.
The potential friction between Trump and Poland’s ruling liberal-globalists, whether on the issue of deploying Polish peacekeepers to Ukraine or just in general, could therefore easily imperil bilateral ties and thus possibly have political consequences at home with time. Tusk and Sikorski might therefore wager that it’s better to fully capitulate to Trump, do his bidding, and avoid any problems until at least after next year’s presidential election if they’re able to replace Duda with one of their own.
