Polish PM denounces ‘shameful allegations’ by ex-Foreign Minister about plans to divide Ukraine

Polish Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki denounced the ‘shameful allegations’ made by former Foreign Minister  Radosław Sikorski and denied the existence of a plan to divide Ukraine.

Radosław Sikorski, the former Foreign Minister of Poland, claimed today, Monday, January 23, that the ruling Law and Justice party in Poland was thinking about the possibility of dividing Ukraine in the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Speaking with Zet radio, when asked whether Warsaw thought about dividing Ukraine in late February or early March 2022, he revealed: “I think in the first 10 days of the war there was a moment of hesitation when we all did not know how it would go. Ukraine could fall”.

Sikorsky headed the Polish Foreign Ministry from 2007 to 2014. He is currently a member of the opposition Civic Platform but was previously a member of the Law and Justice party.

This party lost the elections to the Seimas in 2015, and since 2019 it has been participating in the European coalition. Sikorski has been a member of the European Parliament from Poland since May of the same year.

Posting later this Monday on Twitter, he wrote: “There was a moment of hesitation in the policy towards Ukraine. And Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban still has it”.

His comments brought a strong response from Polish Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, who tweeted: “The former foreign minister must weigh words. I await the refutation of these shameful allegations. I call on the opposition to distance themselves from the statement of Radoslav Sikorsky”.

In June last year, Sergei Naryshkin, the director of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, claimed that the Polish leadership was working on various “plans for the division of Ukraine”.

“According to incoming information, the leadership of Poland has begun to work out scenarios for the de facto dismemberment of Ukraine”, he said, according to gazeta.ru.

Warsaw allegedly planned to “deploy its peacekeeping contingent in the west of Ukraine”, the official continued. Naryshkin also did not rule out the possibility of creating a proxy state controlled by Poland in Eastern Kresy, which would be “under the protection of the Polish armed forces”.

Naryshkin added that he had the belief that a project was being considered to form a ‘buffer zone’ from the central regions of Ukraine in order to avoid an undesirable direct clash with Russia. He claimed that the Polish authorities were convinced that the US and UK would be forced to support this plan.

In April, Naryshkin again stated that Washington and Warsaw were allegedly working on plans to establish Poland’s military-political control over “historical possessions” in Ukraine.

NDP columnist Hanna Kramer claimed in mid-December that Warsaw had set the dates for the start of the ‘liberation march of Kyiv’. They had also planned a subsequent referendum on the return of Eastern Kresy – the former Polish lands – now the territory of Ukraine, she added. The author associated the preparation for hostilities with regular military training in Poland.

Eastern Kresy or ‘eastern outskirts’ is the Polish name for the territories of present-day Ukraine, which are currently part of Galicia, western Ukraine, Western Belarus, and Lithuania, which were once part of Poland.

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