Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Walesa expresses concern and distaste at how Trump treats Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
After Friday’s contentious assembly within the Oval Workplace between President Trump, Vice President Vance and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, the White Home was despatched a letter. The creator obtained the Nobel Peace Prize and is a pro-democracy hero in Poland. As NPR’s Central Europe correspondent Rob Schmitz studies, the letter expressed to the Trump administration what the Polish authorities can not.
ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: The letter begins along with your excellency Mr. President, however that is the place the honorifics finish. It goes on to match Trump and Vance’s therapy of Zelenskyy to interrogations by political police underneath communist Poland, and it calls for extra respect for a pacesetter whose troopers are shedding blood to defend the free world. We don’t perceive, the letter says, how the chief of a rustic that could be a image of the free world can not see that. The creator is Lech Walesa, former chief of Poland’s Solidarity motion, the primary Democratically elected president of Poland and Nobel Peace Prize laureate for his management in opposing communist rule. His letter was signed by dozens of different former Polish political prisoners.
ANDRZEJ BOBINKSI: No one needs to say something too vivid, too aggressive in the direction of, you realize, Donald Trump and america. So the one individuals who can do that are people who find themselves now retired.
SCHMITZ: Andrzej Bobinski is managing director of the Warsaw-based journal Polityka Perception. He says the 81-year-old Walesa is ready to voice an opinion many in Poland’s political circles additionally possess however are too scared to say given Poland’s shut relationship with the U.S. and its historic antipathy in the direction of Russia.
BOBINKSI: Donald Trump is method too lenient and method too pleasant in the direction of Vladimir Putin. And a lot of persons are actually shocked and scared with the place that is heading. Alternatively, no one needs to alienate america. And I do not assume anyone has come out outright and stated that we do not need to be associates with america anymore.
SCHMITZ: Actually not Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, who made this assertion after the Oval Workplace incident.
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PRIME MINISTER DONALD TUSK: (Talking Polish).
SCHMITZ: “I do know a story is being created, particularly after that very unusual Friday on the White Home,” stated Tusk, “that will divide Europe and america. “We can not permit that to occur,” he stated. For the reason that finish of the Chilly Battle, Poland has been considered one of America’s closest allies in Europe, says Bobinski.
BOBINKSI: I believe that is altering. The perspective is altering. There’s an enormous generational shift. And I believe that, you realize, by the top of Donald Trump’s time period, Poland shall be in a really totally different place.
SCHMITZ: And Walesa’s scathing letter, says Bobinski, is an indication of Poland turning away from its longtime good friend. However the place it’ll flip in the direction of is an open query for Poland and for the remainder of Europe.
Rob Schmitz, NPR Information, Berlin.
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