{"text":[[{"start":6.8,"text":"The leader of Poland’s rightwing opposition has escalated a dispute with Ukraine by urging Warsaw to block Kyiv’s EU accession talks, turning a historical row with one of his country’s closest wartime allies into a new front in his battle with Prime Minister Donald Tusk."}],[{"start":24.3,"text":"Jarosław Kaczyński, head of the Law and Justice (PiS) party, said on Thursday that he would return a medal awarded to him by Ukraine “as an expression of my attitude not so much towards Ukrainians, but towards the Ukrainian elite”."}],[{"start":38.05,"text":"His intervention unfolded as Tusk, Kaczyński’s longstanding pro-EU rival and political bête noire, opened an international conference in Gdańsk aimed at mobilising support for Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction. "}],[{"start":51.949999999999996,"text":"The split-screen drama underlines how far Poland’s Ukraine debate has shifted since the first months of Russia’s full-scale invasion, when the then PiS-led government in Warsaw spearheaded western support for Kyiv."}],[{"start":65.89999999999999,"text":"But Kaczyński’s remarks mark a further hardening of PiS’s tone towards Kyiv as the party seeks to appeal to farmers angered by Ukrainian agricultural imports and to Poles increasingly wary of the costs of hosting Ukrainian refugees. Polish rightwing politicians have sought to capitalise on that sentiment as they hope to regain power in parliamentary elections next year."}],[{"start":88.25,"text":"The immediate trigger for the feud was a decision last month by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to rename one of the country’s special forces units in honour of the “heroes of the UPA”, the acronym for the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The UPA fought for Ukrainian independence but remains deeply controversial in Poland because of its role in the Volhynia massacres, in which about 100,000 ethnic Poles were killed during the second world war in what is now Ukraine."}],[{"start":119.15,"text":"Kaczyński said on Thursday that the dispute between Kyiv and Warsaw over wartime atrocities “is being escalated violently by the other side. I increasingly see that this is a very harmful and very dangerous manoeuvre.”"}],[{"start":132.35,"text":"President Karol Nawrocki, a PiS-backed politician elected last year, has stripped Zelenskyy of Poland’s highest state honour, the Order of the White Eagle, which he had received in 2023. "}],[{"start":144,"text":"Zelenskyy and other former Ukrainian presidents have returned their Polish decorations. Zelenskyy also skipped the Gdańsk conference, sending his prime minister instead."}],[{"start":155.15,"text":"He has accused Polish politicians of inflaming the dispute to appeal to voters who have grown more hostile towards Ukraine, including farmers angered by Ukrainian agricultural imports."}],[{"start":165.9,"text":"“The president of Poland then takes the next step — he says that Ukraine has no place in Europe because it’s bad for Polish farmers. Why is he saying this? So that he can then put pressure on Tusk and block the [EU membership negotiation] cluster,” Zelenskyy told a Ukrainian TV channel this week."}],[{"start":184.95000000000002,"text":"After spearheading western support for Kyiv in the early months of Russia’s full-scale invasion, PiS has increasingly sought to tap growing unease over Ukraine, including opposition to its EU accession and resentment over refugees and agricultural imports."}],[{"start":200.85000000000002,"text":"Almost 60 per cent of Poles oppose Ukraine’s bid to join the EU, according to an Ibris poll published by Radio ZET on Thursday."}],[{"start":210.00000000000003,"text":"However, in his opening address in Gdańsk, Tusk said that “Ukraine rightly wants to be part of a united Europe . . . The condition for true, full unification has always been an understanding of one’s own history and a genuine capacity and willingness for reconciliation.”"}],[{"start":225.60000000000002,"text":"The Polish government last week joined its EU peers in agreeing to open the first so-called negotiation clusters with Ukraine — talks aimed at aligning the country’s legislation to EU rules. “Poland should begin blocking the clusters,” Kaczyński said on Thursday."}],[{"start":240.40000000000003,"text":"European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said Brussels would soon disburse a second €6bn loan tranche to Ukraine to support drone production, following an initial €3bn allocation. The money is part of the EU’s €90bn lending package for Ukraine, which had been delayed by Hungary’s former prime minister Viktor Orbán."}],[{"start":261.00000000000006,"text":"Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said the two-day conference was expected to produce about 160 agreements with western donors, amounting to roughly €10bn in reconstruction commitments."}],[{"start":273.95000000000005,"text":"Additional reporting by Fabrice Deprez in Kyiv"}],[{"start":284.50000000000006,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1782444943_2734.mp3"}