Poland’s president-elect Karol Nawrocki has voiced opposition to Ukraine’s proposed accession to the European Union in his first interview with foreign media since winning the June 1 election .
Asked by Hungarian news portal Mandiner about what his thoughts on the prospects of Ukraine’s membership of the bloc, Nawrocki, who will take office in August, said: “At the moment, I am against Ukraine’s entry into the European Union.”
Nawrocki, the opposition Conservatives (PiS) candidate in the election, confirmed the position he had taken on the campaign trail. In January, he said that he “currently does not envision Ukraine in either the EU or NATO until important civilisational issues for Poland are resolved”.
That was an allusion to the differences between Poland and Ukraine over the Volhynia massacres in which Ukrainian nationalists murdered over 100,000 ethnic Polish civilians during the Second World War.
Poland regards that as genocide whereas Ukraine rejects that characterisation and continues to honour as national heroes many of the nationalist leaders. They included Stepan Bandera who led the militant wing of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists responsible for the bloodshed.
Nawrocki noted that Poland had been pressing for the exhumation of the remains of the victims of Volhynia. He also said the country was against “unfair competition” from Ukraine in the agricultural and logistics sectors and that he would push for compromises that were acceptable to Poland.
In his interview, Nawrocki also emphasised that “the Polish State must support Ukraine from a strategic and geopolitical point of view” because “the biggest threat to me as an anti-Communist, and in my opinion to the entire region, is the Russian Federation”.
“This is a post-imperial, neo-Communist state headed by Vladimir Putin, a war criminal,” added the president-elect, who noted that he was on a list of those wanted by Russia due to his role leading an effort to demolish Soviet-era monuments in Poland.
“We must support Ukraine in its conflict with the Russian Federation but Ukraine must understand that other countries, including Poland and Hungary and other European countries, also have their own interests,” said Nawrocki.
His stance against Ukraine joining the EU ran contrary to that of the centre-left government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk and that taken by the previous Conservative (PiS) government leaders and the outgoing PiS aligned President Andrzej Duda.
During the election campaign, Nawrocki was criticised by Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland Vasyl Bodnar for signing a pledge to oppose Ukraine’s membership of NATO. The Ukrainian diplomat called that “unacceptable” and was “playing into Russia’s hands”.
Nawrocki’s candidacy received backing from US Republicans and the the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, one of the few European heads of government also sceptical about Ukraine’s membership of the EU.
Orbán and Nawrocki agreed on the need for the EU to avoid becoming a superstate and were both questioning of Ukraine’s EU and NATO ambitions.
