Diplomatic Car Escorting Polish PM Caused Accident in Ukraine in Summer

One of the cars accompanying Mateusz Morawiecki, the Prime Minister of Poland, caused a serious accident in Ukraine on 7 July of this year.

According to Wirtualna Polska, a recent report in the Polish media says that 42-year-old Ukrainian Oleh Lischuk was seriously injured due to the collision.

The Prime Minister of Poland visited Ukraine to honour the memory of the victims of the Volyn tragedy. A convoy of cars accompanying the head of the Polish government visited the now defunct village of Puzhnyky in Ternopil Oblast.

One of the cars caused an accident approximately 30 kilometres from Ternopil. A car belonging to diplomats from the Polish Embassy in Kyiv rammed into a car parked on the roadside. The vehicle overturned on its side into a ditch as a result of the impact, and its driver fell out of the window.

"One car passed, a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth... I remember there were dozens of them. They all passed by, usually in the oncoming lane... I can't say which of the cars – the penultimate or the last – went onto the side of the road on the side where I was parked and flew straight at me. It was a head-on collision. A bang, a crash, and I don't remember anything. I passed out,"  Lishchuk said.

Because the accident was caused by one of the last cars in the convoy, the vehicles in front continued to move. Protocol dictates that vehicles carrying the prime minister do not usually stop in such situations.

A man with multiple injuries was taken to hospital in Ternopil, and the embassy diplomats insisted on treatment in Poland.

Lischuk told the media that he was taken to Poland for treatment, but he had support from the Polish state only in the first days. He underwent surgery, and his wife was provided with a paid hotel room.

Later, the independent U-Work Foundation helped the man with obtaining a PESEL number and payment for rehabilitation.

The Embassy of Poland in Ukraine reacted to the publication on Twitter (X) on 9 October.

 "We inform you that the car whose driver caused the accident was not in the Prime Minister's convoy but belonged to the military attaché, whose employee most likely passed out at the wheel. 

The embassy did not keep silent about the event; we published a statement on our website on the same day," the embassy stated.

There was indeed a short statement about this, but without any details, on the website of the Polish Embassy in Kyiv.

"A traffic accident occurred in Ukraine involving a car belonging to the military attaché of the Republic of Poland on 7 July. The causes of the accident are currently being investigated," the message read.