Former Polish dissidents, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate and recipient of the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award Lech Wałęsa, have told U.S. President Donald Trump that footage of his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House on Friday has left them shocked and disgusted.
In an open letter published by Wałęsa on his Facebook profile, they say the atmosphere in the Oval Office reminded them of the interrogations they experienced during secret police interrogations and communist trials, reports Echo24. Despite Wałęsa’s claims, most communist prisoners or interrogation targets were not allowed to immediately leave after arguing with their interrogators. Furthermore, most of these interrogations did not take place in as an open argument before the global press.
During the Oval Office rift, Trump told Zelensky that he had no cards in his hand and that he was “playing with the lives of millions of people, playing with World War III.”
“Prosecutors and judges, acting on the orders of the all-powerful communist political police, also explained to us that they held all the cards and we held none. They demanded that we stop our activities, arguing that thousands of innocent people were suffering because of us,” the former Polish dissident wrote.
Figures who contributed to the fall of communism in Poland find it offensive that Trump expects “respect and gratitude for the material assistance that the United States provided to Ukraine, which was at war with Russia.”
According to them, gratitude “belongs to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who shed their blood to defend the values of the free world.” Former Polish dissidents reminded Trump that Ukrainians “have been dying on the front lines for 11 years in the name of the values and independence of their homeland, which is under attack by Putin’s Russia.”
Russia occupied and annexed Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014 and backed separatists who opposed Kyiv in eastern Ukraine. Three years ago, the Russian military launched a large-scale invasion of the neighboring country on the orders of President Vladimir Putin.
In addition to Wałęsa a symbol of the Poles’ resistance against the totalitarian regime and the first post-communist president, the letter was signed by, for example, former president Bronislaw Komorowski and publicist Adam Michnik.
