Lech Wałęsa, Solidarity leaders demand US honor Budapest Memorandum

Former Polish president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Wałęsa, along with 38 other former political prisoners of Poland’s communist regime, has issued a scathing letter to US President Donald Trump following his recent meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

It compares Trump’s demands for Ukrainian gratitude to communist-era interrogation tactics, rejecting the administration’s attempt to transform promised aid into a $500 billion extraction of Ukraine’s natural resources while witholding meaningful security guarantees.

The letter, signed by prominent figures from Poland’s anti-communist Solidarity movement, strongly criticizes Trump’s expectations of gratitude from Ukraine for US military aid, arguing that “gratitude is due to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who shed blood in defense of the values of the free world.”

Full Translation of the Letter

Dear Mr. President,

We watched your conversation with President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky with horror and distaste. We find your expectations regarding showing respect and gratitude for material aid provided by the United States to Ukraine fighting against Russia offensive. Gratitude is due to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who shed blood in defense of the values of the free world. It is they who, for over 11 years, have been dying on the front lines in the name of these values and the independence of their Homeland attacked by Putin’s Russia.

We do not understand how the leader of a country that is a symbol of the free world cannot see this.

We were also horrified by the fact that the atmosphere in the Oval Office during this conversation reminded us of the one we remember well from interrogations by the Security Service and from courtrooms in communist courts.

Prosecutors and judges, commissioned by the all-powerful communist political police, also explained to us that they held all the cards, and we held none. They demanded that we cease our activities, arguing that thousands of innocent people were suffering because of us. They deprived us of freedom and civil rights because we refused to cooperate with the authorities and did not show them gratitude. We are shocked that you treated President Volodymyr Zelensky in a similar manner.

The history of the 20th century shows that each time the United States wanted to maintain distance from democratic values and its European allies, it ended in a threat to themselves.

President Woodrow Wilson understood this when he decided to bring the United States into World War I in 1917.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood this when, after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he decided that the war in defense of America would be fought not only in the Pacific but also in Europe, in alliance with states attacked by the Third Reich.

We remember that without President Ronald Reagan and American financial commitment, it would not have been possible to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union empire. President Reagan was aware that millions of enslaved people suffered in Soviet Russia and the countries it conquered, including thousands of political prisoners who paid with their freedom for their sacrifice in defense of democratic values. His greatness lay, among other things, in the fact that he did not hesitate to call the USSR the “Evil Empire” and waged a decisive battle against it. We won, and a monument to President Ronald Reagan stands today in Warsaw opposite the US Embassy.

Mr. President, material aid – military and financial – cannot be an equivalent for blood shed in the name of the independence and freedom of Ukraine, Europe, and the entire free world. Human life is priceless; its value cannot be measured in money. Gratitude is due to those who sacrifice their blood and freedom. For us, the people of “Solidarity,” former political prisoners of the communist regime serving Soviet Russia, this is obvious.

We appeal for the United States to fulfill the guarantees it provided along with Great Britain in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, which explicitly recorded a commitment to defend the inviolability of Ukraine’s borders in exchange for it giving up its nuclear weapons. These guarantees are unconditional: there is not a word about treating such assistance as an economic exchange.

Lech Wałęsa, former political prisoner, leader of Solidarity, president of the Third Polish Republic

Context

The letter comes in response to the tense meeting between President Trump and President Zelensky at the White House on Friday, where what was expected to be a signing of a minerals deal instead turned into a confrontational exchange. During this meeting, Trump and Vice President Vance reportedly expressed frustration with Ukraine, demanding more gratitude for US military assistance and pressuring Ukraine to make a deal with Russia.

In the deal, the US is seeking a 50-year stake in Ukraine’s valuable mineral resources, which Ukrainian officials have privately described as “colonial.”

The proposed agreement would require Ukraine to allocate 50% of its mineral revenue to the US until the contribution reaches $500 billion – a figure that far exceeds the approximately $98.5 billion in total US aid provided to date. President Zelensky has firmly rejected these terms, stating: “We agreed with Biden that this was a grant. A grant is not a debt.”

The Trump administration is signaling that future military aid to Ukraine, which is in the fourth year of fighting off a Russian invasion, will be conditional on the signing of the deal. However, the deal does not offer any meaningful security guarantees for Ukraine, which Kyiv argues are essential for preventing renewed Russian hostilities in the case of a frozen war situation for which Trump advocates.

Both the USA’s refusal to offer protection to Ukraine and the apparent economic coercion appear to violate the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, in which Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for security guarantees from the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom – commitments the signatories argue are “unconditional” and not contingent on expressions of gratitude.

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The signatories of this letter – all former political prisoners under Poland’s communist regime – draw direct parallels between Trump’s treatment of Zelensky and their own experiences of intimidation by communist authorities. Their perspective carries particular weight given Poland’s historical experience with both Soviet domination and the successful struggle for freedom led by the Solidarity movement in the 1980s.