Fact Check: Yes, former Polish president Lech Wałęsa wrote letter to Trump about pausing military aid to Ukraine
Claim:
Former President of Poland Lech Wałęsa wrote a letter to Donald Trump criticizing the U.S. President's decision to suspend the delivery of all U.S. military aid to Ukraine.
Rating:
Context:
Wałęsa did post such a letter on his Facebook page. However, it is not clear whether he wrote the letter alone or in conjunction with any of its signatories. It is also not clear whether he sent the letter directly to Trump or just posted it on social media.
In early March 2025, a rumor circulated online that former President of Poland Lech Wałęsa wrote a critical letter to Donald Trump expressing "fear and distaste" at the U.S. President's tense White House meeting with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Feb. 28 and that the letter denounced the U.S. decision to halt military aid to Ukraine.
During the Oval Office meeting, Trump accused Zelenskyy of not being grateful enough for U.S. support in Ukraine's war with Russia. Three days later, on March 3, the U.S. president temporarily suspended the delivery of all U.S. military aid to Ukraine.
Amid the diplomatic dispute, social media users claimed on X and Facebook (archived, archived, archived) that Wałęsa — a trade unionist who served as Poland's president between 1990 and 1995 and who played a leading role in the fall of Communism — wrote the letter to Trump that included criticism of the U.S. president.
One X user, whose post had amassed more than 13.1 million views as of this writing, wrote a thread containing non-verbatim excerpts from the letter. The thread started: "Former President of Poland Lech Wałęsa wrote the following letter to Donald Trump."
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10161318107352549&set=a.10150500205492549
Snopes readers also emailed us to ask if it was true that the former Polish president wrote the letter.
In short, Wałęsa did post the text of such a letter to Trump on his Facebook page on March 3 (archived). Therefore, we have rated this claim as true.
https://www.facebook.com/lechwalesa/posts/pfbid0YdAEYf7p6HsVo1oEhZrogFjMQHmptvKwPaHJtpuw76n5YnERYAeLj6nYLYw57XsHl
The former Polish president and 38 other Polish former political prisoners signed the document. However, it is not clear whether Wałęsa wrote the letter alone or in conjunction with any of the other signatories. It was also not clear whether they actually sent the letter to Trump or just posted it on social media.
Snopes contacted the former president to ask about the authorship of the letter and whether it was sent to the U.S. president. We will update this story if we receive a response.
At the top of the communication, a note appears in Polish before the letter addresses Trump. Facebook's English translation reads: "After the U.S. decision to suspend supplies to Ukraine, if the answer was in my gesture it would be 'Let's do our part' not a step back. AMEN. This is the text we signed." (Google's English translation reads: "After the U.S. decision to stop deliveries to Ukraine, if the answer were in my hands it would be 'Let's do our thing' not a step back. AMEN. We signed this text.")
In the letter, Wałęsa and the signatories said they "watched the report of [Trump's] conversation" with Zelenskyy "with fear and distaste" and that they considered it "insulting" for the U.S. president to expect "respect and gratitude" for U.S. military aid.
The signatories also compared the Ukrainian president's treatment in the Oval Office to the experiences they endured while being interrogated when they lived under Communist rule.
The Facebook translation of the letter read in full:
Your Excellency Mr President,
We watched the report of your conversation with the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenski with fear and distaste. We consider your expectations to show respect and gratitude for the material help provided by the United States fighting Russia to Ukraine insulting. Gratitude is due to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who shed their blood in defense of the values of the free world. They have been dying on the frontline for more than 11 years in the name of these values and independence of their Homeland, which was attacked by Putin's Russia.
We do not understand how the leader of a country that is the symbol of the free world cannot see it.
Our panic was also caused by the fact that the atmosphere in the Oval Office during this conversation reminded us of one we remember well from Security Service interrogations and from the debate rooms in Communist courts. Prosecutors and judges at the behest of the all-powerful communist political police also explained to us that they hold all the cards and we hold none. They demanded us to stop our business, arguing that thousands of innocent people suffer because of us. They deprived us of our freedoms and civil rights because we refused to cooperate with the government and our gratitude. We are shocked that Mr. President Volodymyr Zelenski treated in the same way.
The history of the 20th century shows that every time the United States wanted to keep its distance from democratic values and its European allies, it ended up being a threat to themselves. This was understood by President Woodrow Wilson, who decided to join the United States in World War I in 1917. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood this, deciding after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 that the war for the defense of America would be fought not only in the Pacific, but also in Europe, in alliance with the countries attacked by the Third Reich.
We remember that without President Ronald Reagan and American financial commitment it would not have been possible to bring the collapse of the Soviet Union empire. President Reagan was aware that millions of enslaved people were suffering in Soviet Russia and the countries it conquered, including thousands of political prisoners who paid for their sacrifice in defense of democratic values with freedom. His greatness was m. in. on the fact that he without hesitation called the USSR the "Empire of Evil" and gave it a decisive fight. We won, and the statue of President Ronald Reagan stands today in Warsaw vis a vis of the U.S. embassy. [Google translates these last two sentences to: His greatness consisted, among other things, in the fact that he unhesitatingly called the USSR the "Evil Empire" and gave it a decisive fight. We won, and a monument to President Ronald Reagan stands today in Warsaw opposite the U.S. Embassy.]
Mr. President, material aid - military and financial - cannot be equivalent to the blood shed in the name of independence and freedom of Ukraine, Europe, as well as the whole free world. Human life is priceless, its value cannot be measured with money. Gratitude is due to those who make the sacrifice of blood and freedom. It is obvious for us, the people of "Solidarity", former political prisoners of the communist regime serving Soviet Russia.
We are calling for the United States to withdraw from the guarantees it made with the Great Britain in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which recorded a direct obligation to defend the intact borders of Ukraine in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons resources. These guarantees are unconditional: there is no word about treating such aid as an economic exchange.
Biographies on the Lech Wałęsa Institute website say the "Solidarity" trade union the former Polish president led was the first independent and oppositional social movement in the Soviet bloc. In December 1981, the Polish government introduced martial law in an attempt to suppress political opposition, such as Wałęsa's movement. The then-trade union leader was incarcerated until November 1982 before winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983.
Snopes contacted the White House for comment and will update this story if we receive a response.
Lech Wałęsa Institute. "Biography • Fundacja Instytut Lecha Wałęsy." Www.ilw.org.pl, www.ilw.org.pl/en/founder/biography. Accessed 4 Mar. 2025.
---. "Foundation - Lech Walesa Institute." Archive.org, web.archive.org/web/20090614022258/www.ilw.org.pl/en/117%2C50. Accessed 4 Mar. 2025.
Hunder, Max, and Olena Harmash. 'Zelenskiy Calls Trump Clash Regrettable: "It's Time to Make Things Right"'. Reuters, 4 Mar. 2025. www.reuters.com, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/trump-halts-all-us-military-aid-ukraine-white-house-official-says-2025-03-04/.
LaMagdeleine, Izz Scott. '15 Rumors We've Fact-Checked about Zelenskyy'. Snopes, 1 Mar. 2025, https://www.snopes.com//collections/zelenskyy-rumors-collection/.
Rascouët-Paz, Anna. 'Zelenskyy Met with Democrats — and Republicans — before His Meeting with Trump'. Snopes, 3 Mar. 2025, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/trump-zelenskyy-meeting-with-democrats/.
The Nobel Prize. "Lech Wałęsa Biographical." NobelPrize.org, www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1983/walesa/biographical/. Accessed 4 Mar. 2025.
---. "Lech Wałęsa Facts." NobelPrize.org, www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1983/walesa/facts/. Accessed 4 Mar. 2025.
'Trump Pauses US Military Aid to Ukraine While Pressuring Zelenskyy to Move toward Quick End to War'. AP News, 3 Mar. 2025, https://apnews.com/article/trump-zelenskyy-russia-ukraine-a15a459c9a3a393d040478ebbe250a9e.
Wałęsa, Lech. "Letter to Trump." Facebook.com, 3 Mar. 2022, www.facebook.com/lechwalesa/posts/pfbid0YdAEYf7p6HsVo1oEhZrogFjMQHmptvKwPaHJtpuw76n5YnERYAeLj6nYLYw57XsHl. Accessed 4 Mar. 2025.
Wrona, Caroline Wazer, Aleksandra. 'Unpacking Claim Zelenskyy Called Vance an Expletive at White House Meeting'. Snopes, 3 Mar. 2025, https://www.snopes.com//news/2025/03/03/zelenskyy-vance-white-house-meeting/.
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