Former Polish President Lech Walesa, Zbigniew Buyak, Adam Michnik and other Solidarity leaders have appealed to US President Donald Trump with a statement in support of Ukraine.
They urged the United States to fulfill its guarantees, which it provided together with the United Kingdom in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.
The full address of Solidarity leaders to US President Donald Trump:
“We watched with horror and indignation the report of your conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. We find your expectations of respect and gratitude for the material assistance provided by the United States to Ukraine, which is fighting Russia, offensive. Gratitude belongs to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who shed their blood, defending the values of the free world. They have been dying on the front lines for over 11 years in the name of these values and the independence of their homeland, which has been attacked by Putin’s Russia. We do not understand how the leader of a country that is a symbol of the free world could not see this.
We were also struck by the fact that the atmosphere in the Oval Office during this conversation reminded us of the one we remember well from interrogations in the Security Service and trials in communist courts. Prosecutors and judges, acting on orders the all-powerful communist political police, also explained to us that they had all the trump cards in their hands, and we had none. They demanded that we cease our activities, arguing that thousands of innocent people were suffering because of us. They deprived us of our freedom and civil rights simply because we did not agree to cooperate with the authorities and did not show them gratitude. We are shocked that you, Mr. President, treated President Volodymyr Zelensky in this way.
The history of the 20th century shows that every time the United States tried to distance itself from democratic values and its European allies, it became a threat to itself. President Woodrow Wilson realized this when in 1917 he decided to enter the United States into the First World War. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt realized this when, after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he decided that the war to defend America would be fought not only in the Pacific but also in Europe, in alliance with the states attacked by the Third Reich.
We remember that without President Ronald Reagan and the financial support of the United States, it would have been impossible to bring the empire of the Soviet Union to collapse. President Reagan realized that millions of enslaved people were suffering in Soviet Russia and the countries it conquered, including thousands of political prisoners who paid with their freedom for their struggle to defend democratic values. His greatness lay, in particular, in the fact that he did not hesitate to call the USSR the “Evil Empire” and resolutely entered into battle with it. We won, and today in Warsaw, opposite the US Embassy, stands a monument to President Ronald Reagan.
Mr. President, material aid – military and financial – cannot be equivalent to the blood shed for the independence and freedom of Ukraine, Europe and the entire free world. Human life is priceless, it cannot be valued in money. Gratitude belongs to those who sacrifice their blood and freedom. For us, the people of Solidarity, former political prisoners of the communist regime that served Soviet Russia, this is obvious.
We call on the United States to fulfill its guarantees that it provided together with Great Britain in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994. This document contains a clear obligation to protect the territorial integrity of Ukraine in exchange for the abandonment of its nuclear arsenal. These guarantees are unconditional: there is not a single word in it that such aid is the subject of economic exchange.”
“Channel 33”
