Free Republic

Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski conceded defeat to conservative challenger Andrzej Duda in Sunday's presidential election, a result that will set alarm bells ringing for the government, which faces its own election race later this year. Komorowski had originally been seen as a shoo-in for another term in office, and his defeat reflected a desire among voters for new faces, and a sense that Poland's new-found prosperity was not being shared out equally. The outgoing president, an ally of Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz, announced he was conceding defeat after an exit poll showed he had won 47 percent to 53 percent...

This week, Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski accused the Obama Administration of betrayal, saying, “Our mistake was that by accepting the American offer of a [missile defense] shield we failed to take into account the political risk associated with a change of president.… We paid a high political price. We do not want to make the same mistake again. We must have a missile system as an element of our defences.” In 2009, President Obama cancelled the deal the U.S. had with Poland and the Czech Republic to build an interceptor site and radar that would provide protection of the U.S....

Poland's new President Bronislaw Komorowski sworn in WARSAW — Bronislaw Komorowski was sworn in Friday as Poland's new president after a snap election forced by the air crash death of Lech Kaczynski, but his defeated rival snubbed the official ceremony. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the bereaved identical twin of the late president, was not in parliament for the inauguration, with a party spokesman suggesting the president's camp had insulted his dead brother's memory during the campaign. In his inaugural address, the free-market liberal Komorowski vowed to support Poland's government in developing ties within the European Union and NATO, with strategic partner the...

Seventy years after the Katyn Massacre, the president of Poland — and many other Poles — have died on Russian soil. “It is a damned place,” commented Aleksander Kwasniewski, the former Polish president and communist-turned-social democrat. It’s difficult to disagree. Katyn, the forest near the western border of Russia, which in 1940 became a mass grave for some 4,000 Polish Army officers and community leaders out of 20,000 first interned by the Soviet government following the 1939 Ribbentrop-Molotov carve-up of Poland and then subsequently murdered by the KGB’s predecessor on Stalin’s orders, has tragically claimed more Polish victims almost exactly...