Polish Hero ‘Disgusted’ by Trump’s Treatment of Zelenskyy

Lech Wałęsa, the world renowned Polish hero, statesman, dissident, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who served as the president of Poland in 1990-95, in a letter to President Trump expressed his “horror and disgust” with the White House’s “offensive” treatment of President Zelenskyy of Ukraine last Friday.

The full translated text of the letter follows:

Dear Mr. President,

We watched with horror and disgust the report of your conversation with the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. We find your expectations of respect and gratitude for the material assistance that the United States has provided to Ukraine, which is fighting Russia, offensive. Gratitude belongs to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who shed their blood defending the values of the free world. They have been dying on the front lines for over 11 years for these values and the independence of their homeland, which has been attacked by Putin’s Russia.

We do not understand how the leader of a state that is a symbol of the free world cannot see this.

We were also outraged by the atmosphere in the Oval Office during this conversation, which reminded us of scenes of interrogations by the Security Service (the Polish communist KGB) and the courtrooms of communist courts. Prosecutors and judges, led by the all-powerful communist political police, also explained to us that they held all the cards, and we held none. They demanded that we cease our activities, claiming that thousands of innocent people were suffering because of us. They deprived us of our freedom and civil rights because we did not agree to cooperate with the authorities and did not show gratitude to them. We are shocked that you, Mr. President, treated President Volodymyr Zelensky in this way.

The history of the 20th century shows that every time the United States tried to distance itself from democratic values and its European allies, it ultimately became a threat to itself. President Woodrow Wilson realized this when in 1917 he decided to enter the United States into World War I. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood this when, after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he decided that the war to defend America would be waged not only on the Pacific front, but also in Europe – in alliance with the states attacked by the Third Reich.

We remember that without President Ronald Reagan and US financial support, the empire of the Soviet Union would not have been destroyed. President Reagan was aware that millions of enslaved people were suffering in Soviet Russia and the countries it conquered, including thousands of political prisoners who paid for their devotion to democratic values with their own freedom. His greatness lay, in particular, in the fact that he did not hesitate to call the USSR the “Evil Empire” and began a resolute struggle against it. We won, and today a monument to President Ronald Reagan stands in Warsaw opposite the US Embassy.

Mr. President, material aid – military and financial – cannot be equivalent to the blood shed for the independence and freedom of Ukraine, Europe, and the entire free world. Human life is priceless, it cannot be measured in money. Gratitude belongs to those who sacrifice their blood and freedom. For us, the people of Solidarity, former political prisoners of the communist regime that served Soviet Russia, this is obvious.

We call on the United States to fulfill the guarantees provided together with Great Britain in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, which expressly states the obligation to protect the territorial integrity of Ukraine in exchange for the abandonment of its nuclear arsenal. These guarantees are unconditional – there is not a single word in it that such aid should be considered an economic exchange.

Signed by: Lech Walesa, former political prisoner, Solidarity leader, President of Poland and other former political prisoners, opposition figures and Solidarity representatives (list of signatories left unchanged).