Lech Wałęsa expresses ‘horror and distaste’ at Trump’s treatment of Zelenskyy
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ex-Polish leader, who won Nobel prize for pro-democracy efforts, compares meeting to a communist interrogation

Mon 3 Mar 2025 10.58 EST

Last modified on Mon 3 Mar 2025 13.25 EST

The former Polish president and Nobel peace prize winner Lech Wałęsa has signed a letter to  expressing “horror and distaste” at his argument with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in the White House last week.

, signed by Wałęsa and more than 30 former Polish political prisoners held during the communist era, said Trump and his vice-president’s demands that Zelenskyy show gratitude were “insulting” in the face of the Ukrainian country’s fight for freedom.

The “atmosphere in the Oval Office reminded us of that which we remember well from interrogations” by Poland’s communist secret services and regime courts, the signatories said.

“The prosecutors and the judges, working on behalf of the omnipotent Communist party police, also told us that they held all the cards, and we held none,” they said.

“We are shocked that you treated Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the same way,” they said.

Wałęsa, who won the Nobel peace prize in 1983, led the pro-democracy Solidarity movement that led to the collapse of communism in Poland and inspired other countries to shed Moscow’s domination.

He served as democratic Poland’s first popularly elected president from 1990-95.

Other signatories of the letter include Adam Michnik, Bogdan Lis, Seweryn Blumsztajn and Władysław Frasyniuk.



Sign up to Headlines Europe

Free newsletter

A digest of the morning's main headlines from the Europe edition emailed direct to you every week day

Enter your email address

Sign up

**Privacy Notice:** Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our . We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google  and  apply.

after newsletter promotion

The US embassy in Warsaw told Reuters that questions on the letter should be directed to the White House press office, which did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
```