Polish parliamentary elections: how the result will affect issues in Ukraine

There is no Poland’s election outcome yet. However, according to the early vote totals of about 50% of the ballots proceeded in Poland, as of now, the main trends remain the same as those the exit polls showed yesterday—United Right, the party of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, is significantly ahead of all other opponents, including Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition.

Yurii Banakhovych, Ukrinform Ukrainian National News Agency correspondent in Warsaw spoke about how issues related to Ukraine will be resolved depending on which political party wins the parliamentary elections and how a new coalition will be formed, during a discussion at the Media Center Ukraine – Ukrinform. 

“In general, the situation in Poland is a little different from, for example, the situation that recently occurred in Slovakia, where the victory of democratic and, let’s say, pro-Ukrainian forces or a coalition dominated by Russophile views was actually at stake. In this case, this is not the case in Poland. The coalition to be formed, hypothetically, by the ruling government or by the opposition—these two forces actually support Ukraine in the war against Russian aggression, they stand for European and Euro-Atlantic integration,” he said.

At the same time, according to Yurii Banakhevych, if the center-leftists form a coalition, they will try to smooth things that have emerged in recent months in Polish-Ukrainian relations as well as the problems that multiplied during the election campaign between Kyiv and Warsaw. In his opinion, they will try to resolve those problems, or some of them will simply not be as acute as the current ruling party.

“First of all, I think we are talking about the complicated historical past in the relations between Poland and Ukraine. For Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s Law and Justice party, this was a very important topic, they raised it, and it was always quite noticeable. The center-left coalition, I think, will try to depoliticize this issue and, perhaps, transfer the solution of these complex issues, or the solution and finding of some kind of consensus, to the level of the expert community, historians,” explained Yurii Banakhovych.

At the same time, in his opinion, the grain crisis will be a bit more difficult. However, Yurii Banakhovych is convinced that if the opposition coalition comes to run the country, it will try to reach a consensus and resolve this issue to restore Ukraine-Poland relations to the level of at least last year, “so that there is no controversy, as this also damages Poland’s image and authority in the international arena.”

“Over the past year and a half, Poland has gained the reputation of the country that helps out Ukraine the most and has a logistics hub for humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Poland also provided a lot of military assistance to Ukraine during the first period of the war. Its expertise in the international arena regarding Russian aggression and its understanding of the geopolitical processes taking place in our part of Europe has grown dramatically over the past year and a half. This deterioration in bilateral relations has also hurt Warsaw itself, and Polish politicians and opposition politicians understand this. I think that in this context, they will try to remove these controversial issues that can be easily removed from the agenda. And those issues that are more complicated, such as the issue of Ukrainian agricultural products, will be resolved in the course of negotiations,” summarized Yurii Banakhovych.

Read more: https://mediacenter.org.ua/news