A lion's voice from the 'bloodlands' roars back at Trump
National Post, 6 March 2025
Lech Wałęsa and other former Soviet-era political prisoners express 'horror and distaste' for U.S. president’s treatment of Zelenskyy
Last week I reported that the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, Patriarch Sviatoslav Shevchuk, warned on his visit to Canada that peace in Ukraine cannot be built on a foundation of lies. There was pain in his warning, as the days of his visit coincided with U.S. President Donald Trump making his own the lies of President Vladimir Putin regarding Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.
Patriarch Sviatoslav, like St. John Paul II generations ago, is a voice from the “bloodlands” — those territories between Germany and Russia that, from 1930 to 1945, witnessed the killing of some 14 million people. John Paul lived under both Hitler and Stalin’s occupation, while Shevchuk did not, but the latter is a worthy heir to the former, giving voice to the blood of the innocent which cries out to heaven.
The week ended with Trump and his vice-president attacking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The disgrace to the Oval Office came from the astonishing behaviour of the hosts, not the guest, who understandably objected to another of Trump’s big lies, namely that Putin can be trusted to observe a ceasefire, let alone a peace agreement.
While the entire world outside of the MAGA environs reacted with disgust, the shameful treatment of Zelenskyy brought forth another lion’s voice from the bloodlands, one who roared from retirement.
Lech Wałęsa, the Solidarity trade union leader who shook the foundations of the evil empire and was elected president of Poland (1990-1995), posted an open letter to Trump, signed by 41 fellow Polish political prisoners of the Soviet era.
He signed the letter as a “political prisoner, Solidarity leader, president of the Republic of Poland,” emphasizing that the first title gave him more credibility than the last. He did not even mention his Nobel Peace Prize. All the other signatories also included “political prisoner” as their first biographical identification.
Expressing “horror and distaste” for Trump’s treatment of Zelenskyy, Wałęsa insisted that “gratitude is owed the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who spilled their blood in the cause of a free world. For more than 11 years, they fell on the front in the name of freedom’s values and for the freedom of their fatherland, which was attacked by Putin’s Russia.”
In a stinging comparison, Wałęsa and his fellow political prisoners said the “atmosphere in the Oval Office reminded us of the kind of discussions that the Polish political police convened in Soviet-era interrogation rooms and Communist courts.”
“Prosecutors and judges, on the orders of the Communist political police also explained to us, that they held all the cards and we held none,” Wałęsa wrote. “We are shocked that you treated President Zelenskyy the same way.”
Those communist show trials insisted that the lies of the regime be treated as the truth. For a moment — never to be repeated, one hopes — that toxic air blew through the Oval Office. For refusing to accept lies presented as truth, Wałęsa and tens of thousands of others were imprisoned. Zelenskyy’s similar refusal has earned him the ire of Trump and the pausing of military aid to Ukraine.
Canadians, on much less grave matters, have come to breathe a bit of that foul air emanating from the White House. Trump lies about the size of the trade deficit. He lies about our oil exports, which offer Americans discounted energy. He lies about drugs and crime; far more American cocaine, heroin and illegal guns come north than the tiny amounts of fentanyl that head south. He lies about our history, our sovereignty and our long harmonious relationship — until recently the envy of the world.
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