Poland’s new president, Karol Nawrocki, chose to meet Donald Trump on his first foreign visit. The decision immediately strained relations between the Presidency and the governing coalition led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was not invited to participate, contrary to established practice, and a public exchange followed between the President’s Chancellery and Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski over protocol and information-sharing. The episode highlighted competing centres of authority in Warsaw: a PiS-aligned presidency and a pro-EU government.
The dispute broke into the media with a back-and-forth over who knew what, and when, about the content of the Washington talks. While both sides state that core security interests remain aligned, the optics point to parallel tracks in foreign policy. That matters for execution: the president sets tone and conducts high-profile engagements, but implementation sits with the cabinet and the diplomatic service. If this dualism persists, Poland’s messaging to allies and partners risks becoming disjointed.
This institutional tension is playing out amid heightened polarisation. The “Ukrainian question” has again been drawn into domestic contestation, with rival blocs calibrating language to their electorates. Rhetoric has hardened, and cross-party space on security narratives appears to be narrowing rather than broadening.
The paradox is that these political collisions come as Poland’s economy has advanced rapidly. The country is now widely counted among the world’s twenty largest economies, and living standards have risen markedly over the past decade. Economic success, however, has not settled political competition. Instead, the campaign mode has lengthened and sharpened.
Within the right, positioning for the next parliamentary election is already visible. Law and Justice (PiS) seeks to regain momentum after leaving office. The working assumption is that a route back to power requires a firmer shift to the right. Support for fringe ultra-right figures has ebbed, while PiS has absorbed parts of their agenda and slogans, including on issues linked to Ukraine. Former president Andrzej Duda’s recent comments — that Ukraine at one point sought to draw Poland into war — are read in this context as signalling to a harder-edged electorate.
A central contention now facing Poland’s right is strategic coherence. The argument, made with increasing force in Warsaw, is that it is not tenable to remain strongly anti-Russian while aligning closely with Trump’s political camp. Comparisons are drawn with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Slovakia’s Robert Fico: both cultivate relations with Trump while maintaining working ties with Vladimir Putin. That template sits uneasily with the Polish right’s identity, which has been built on a pronounced anti-Kremlin stance.
The practical implication is clear. If closeness to Trump’s circle becomes the priority, pressure may build for Warsaw to “normalise” contacts with Moscow. In such a scenario, President Nawrocki could be urged to engage the Kremlin directly, as Orbán and Fico have done. That would collide with the instincts of PiS voters, for whom anti-Russian sentiment is foundational.
The Smolensk air disaster remains the keystone of that memory. The death of President Lech Kaczyński, his wife, and many senior officials in 2010 shaped the modern Polish right. Allegations of Russian culpability, and recriminations over the handling of the aftermath, became organising narratives. PiS figures long criticised domestic opponents for their conduct around the tragedy, including images of then-Prime Minister Donald Tusk on the ground with Russian leaders. Any reframing that casts Putin as a tolerable interlocutor — or as a valued partner of a favoured ally — would cut against years of political messaging.
Jarosław Kaczyński’s personal stake deepens the constraint. Analysts consider it unlikely that he would endorse a course perceived as diminishing the memory of his brother for electoral convenience. That logic points to an eventual collision: either between Poland’s right and the Trump camp if expectations harden, or within the Polish right if leaders attempt a recalibration that their base rejects.
Nawrocki has also revived the question of wartime reparations from Germany. The theme is traditional in PiS campaigning and functions as a marker of national assertiveness. Although the next regular parliamentary election is two years away, Poland could remain in a semi-permanent pre-campaign, with talk of early polls and coalition strain never far from the surface. This environment rewards sharp signalling, but it complicates coherent statecraft.
Westerplatte ceremony: President Nawrocki renews demand for German war reparations
