What Duda leaves behind after a decade in power and what Ukrainians will remember

When the full-scale war began, it was the President of Poland who was among the first European leaders to visit Kyiv and support Ukraine. Andrzej Duda never met with Putin and consistently opposed Russian imperialism.

However, a significant portion of Poles have a rather negative view of his domestic policies, primarily due to his lack of independence and subordination to the Law and Justice (PiS) party.

Read more to understand how President Andrzej Duda will be remembered by both Poles and Ukrainians in the article by Biełsat journalist Michał Kacewicz: A friend of Ukraine, but not a leader: the political legacy of President Andrzej Duda.

Andrzej Duda's two presidential terms (since 2015) mark an entire political era for Poland.

The first eight years of Duda's presidency were characterised by his dependence on his political base, namely the Law and Justice (PiS) party, while the final two years were defined by an ongoing conflict with Donald Tusk’s government.

That said, Duda at times defied PiS and its leader Jarosław Kaczyński. For instance, he refused to sign off on a controversial judicial reform pushed by the party. He also rejected the idea of demanding World War II reparations from Germany and dismissed the head of Polish Television for its propagandistic character.

Now, as Duda leaves office, the world has changed, and he has not prepared Poles for those changes.

Rather than confronting public fears, Duda often exploited them for political gain. His foreign policy lacked broad vision.

Still, he did launch initiatives to strengthen Poland’s role in the region, such as the Three Seas Initiative.

But the diplomatic cornerstone of Duda’s presidency was the relationship with the United States.

Ukraine became the arena for one of Andrzej Duda’s biggest, and perhaps most important, diplomatic efforts.

Even during his first term, he maintained a clearly anti-Russian stance.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, Duda became central to the efforts to support Ukrainians in their fight.

He frequently referred to Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a friend, even amid tensions between Poland and Ukraine over Ukrainian grain exports to Poland.

Following Donald Trump's reelection in the US, Duda sought to calm emotions and claimed that Trump would bring peace, just as he did during and after Poland’s last presidential elections.

Will Duda be able to convince his successor to maintain strong relations with Ukraine? Unlikely.

And Duda likely knows this, having himself been a hostage of PiS politics during his presidency.

If Poland’s new president, Karol Nawrocki, truly distances himself from Ukraine, as he promised during his campaign, it would effectively undermine Duda’s foreign policy legacy.

Ironically, however, it is Nawrocki’s victory that may offer Andrzej Duda a form of redemption: in comparison, Duda could go down in history as a rational and moderate president guided by high ideals.