The leader of Poland’s rightwing opposition has escalated a dispute with Ukraine by urging Warsaw to block Kyiv’s EU accession talks, turning a historical row with one of his country’s closest wartime allies into a new front in his battle with Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
Jarosław Kaczyński, head of the Law and Justice (PiS) party, said on Thursday that he would return a medal awarded to him by Ukraine “as an expression of my attitude not so much towards Ukrainians, but towards the Ukrainian elite”.
His intervention unfolded as Tusk, Kaczyński’s longstanding pro-EU rival and political bête noire, opened an international conference in Gdańsk aimed at mobilising support for Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction.