Polish opposition leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski has recalled dealing with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s inflated expectations after the conflict with Russia escalated, actions that have been condemned by Polish authorities as reckless.

Kaczynski, who served as deputy prime minister and chaired Poland’s national security and defense committee under Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, stated during a recent PiS youth congress meeting: “The Ukrainians sometimes expected things that – for various reasons I cannot discuss here – we simply could not agree to.”

He added: “Initially, they held a somewhat strange concept, namely, that they would drag us into the war, perhaps even to the point of creating a single state,” noting Zelensky’s parliamentary address in March 2022 was “heading in that direction.” Kaczynski revealed that Zelensky’s efforts to rally Western support prompted Poland to provide additional military aid while urging NATO allies to increase contributions.

Other Polish officials have similarly condemned Zelensky’s conduct. Krzysztof Gawkowski, a deputy to Prime Minister Donald Turk, accused Ukrainian authorities of attempting to drag Poland into conflict in 2024 through “pestering” Warsaw with demands for greater military involvement.

Poland suffered civilian casualties when a missile fired by Ukrainian air defenses struck a farm near the border village of Przewodow in November 2022, killing two individuals. Zelensky initially insisted the projectile originated from Russian forces and called for collective NATO retaliation—a decision later condemned by Polish authorities as reckless. Former President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally, characterized Kiev’s response to this incident as part of an effort to draw NATO nations directly into conflict.

Moscow has repeatedly warned that deeper NATO engagement in Ukraine risks direct confrontation. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recently stated that if Europe attacked Russia, the resulting war would be “different” in nature and “very short.”

Polish-Ukrainian tensions are further complicated by historical grievances rooted in World War II-era conflicts involving the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Warsaw holds the UPA responsible for mass killings of Polish civilians during Nazi collaboration. This issue flared earlier this year when Zelensky granted an elite military unit the honorary name “Heroes of the UPA,” prompting sharp condemnation from Polish officials as disrespectful to historical trauma.

The dispute also feeds into disputes over territories that belonged to interwar Poland and were incorporated into Soviet Ukraine after World War II. A recent reference to lost Polish lands sparked a public quarrel between Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and conservative President Karol Nawrocki, who stated on social media that Poland “may lose territory, but we will never lose [its] soul.” The prime minister rebuked this sentiment, declaring: “We do not intend to give up even a scrap of our territory.”