WARSAW: Poland’s freedom icon Lech Walesa and several other communist-era dissidents on Monday slammed Donald Trump over his clash with Volodymyr Zelensky, comparing the US president’s actions to “communist courtrooms”.

In their Oval Office meeting on Friday, Trump berated Zelensky, telling him to be more “thankful” for US support against the invading Russian army in the three-year war and that without US assistance, Ukraine would have been conquered by Moscow.

In a letter addressed to the US president, Walesa and around 40 other Polish former dissidents said they had watched Trump’s conversation with Zelensky “with horror and disgust”. “The atmosphere in the Oval Office during this conversation reminded us of the hearings by the Security Service and in the communist courtrooms,” former Polish president Walesa and fellow dissidents said in the letter.

“We find your expectations of respect and gratitude for the material aid provided by the United States to Ukraine, which is fighting against Russia, offensive,” they told Trump.

Walesa is feted as an icon of freedom as he led a 1980 shipyard workers’ strike, forcing the then-authorities to recognise the communist bloc’s first and only free trade union, Solidarity. He and several other top dissidents were arrested after martial law was imposed in 1981. He then won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983.

After the fall of communism, Walesa in 1990 became Poland’s first democratically elected president since World War II. Poland is a staunch ally of its neighbour Ukraine and has advocated ramped up military aid to the war-torn country.

On Friday, following the heated exchange in the White House, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, in a show of support to Zelensky, assured Ukrainians they were “not alone”.

Published in Dawn, March 4th, 2025