Mar 04, 2025 06:03 AM IST
Former Polish President Lech Walesa, who won the Nobel prize for pro-democracy efforts, critically panned Trump’s treatment of Zelenskyy at the White House.
Poland’s former president and democracy hero Lech Walesa and over 30 other ex-political prisoners in Poland have signed a letter to US President Donald Trump, expressing their “horror and distaste” over his treatment of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Oval Office last week.
“Gratitude is due to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who shed blood in defense of the values of the free world. They are the ones who have been dying on the front lines,” they say,” read the letter, as the Polish officials were notably ticked off by Trump and his vice-president JD Vance demanding Zelenskyy to show gratitude for the United States offering material assistance in Ukraine’s fight for freedom against Russia.
The Nobel Prize laureate’s letter surfaced on Facebook on Monday. Adam Michnik, Bogdan Lis, Seweryn Blumsztajn and Władysław Frasyniuk were among the other democracy activists imprisoned by Poland’s Moscow-backed communist regime before 1989 who signed it. “We were also terrified by the fact that the atmosphere in the Oval Office during this conversation reminded us of the one we remember well from interrogations by the Security Service and from the courtrooms in communist courts,” they wrote.
“Prosecutors and judges, commissioned by the omnipotent communist political police, also explained to us that they had all the cards in their hands, and we had none. They demanded that we cease our activities, arguing that thousands of innocent people were suffering because of us. They deprived us of freedom and civil rights because we did not agree to cooperate with the authorities and did not show them gratitude. We are shocked that you treated President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a similar way,” the letter added.
This is a developing story.
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