Lech Walesa, the leader of Poland’s Solidarity movement, which helped end Moscow’s grip on Eastern Europe at the end of the Cold War, joined with former Polish political prisoners on Monday to send an impassioned letter to President Trump voicing “horror and disgust” at his scolding of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine last week, saying it reminded them of their encounters with bullying Communist-era officials.
They wrote in Polish that they were “terrified 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 had none,” the letter said, a reference to President Trump’s Oval Office rebuke to Mr. Zelensky that “you don’t have the cards.”
Communist functionaries, the letter continued, “demanded that we stop our activities, arguing that thousands of innocent people were suffering because of us.” When President Zelensky insisted in the Oval Office on Friday that security guarantees were needed to make any peace deal with Russia last, Mr. Trump slapped him down, saying, “You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people.”
The letter — signed by Mr. Walesa, the 1980s leader of the Solidarity trade union, and more than 30 prominent former Polish political detainees — was posted on Mr. Walesa’s Facebook page, along with a sometimes imprecise English translation and an old photograph of him meeting with a grinning, tuxedo-clad Mr. Trump.
It expressed angry disbelief that Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance had berated Mr. Zelensky for not thanking them enough for helping Ukraine.