Donald Tusk is returning after eight years of ruling against his fierce political enemy, Jarosław Kaczyński, and his camp.

Many supporters of Donald Tusk sceptically assessed last year his chances of returning to power. Power, however, is once again in his hands today.

Read more about the new Prime Minister of Poland in the article by Biełsat publicist and journalist Michal Kacewicz: A Man from the Past: How Donald Tusk Returned to Polish Politics.

Donald Tusk and Jarosław Kaczyński have embodied and shaped Polish politics for two decades.

Their fierce struggle has not only a political but also a personal dimension, which is very emotional and ambitious. This confrontation has gone through various stages.

It began in the 1990s when the camp of the former movement Solidarity split. Jarosław Kaczyński took the path of sharp criticism of the compromise policy (albeit limited) with former communists.

In contrast, Tusk joined the liberal camp. Kaczyński's rhetoric has turned liberalism into a synonymous with betraying Poland's interests and dirty schemes.

Tusk later led the party Civic Platform, formed on the ruins of Solidarity, the right-centrist Electoral Action Solidarity, the liberal Union of Freedom, and other liberal alliances.

The Kaczyński brothers, Lech and Jarosław, united right-wing and conservative politicians from the former Solidarity camp in the party Law and Justice (PiS).

Donald Tusk mentioned in his recent parliamentary speech in the Sejm the myth created against him by his opponents.

In 2005, at the end of the election campaign, Jacek Kurski, one of Kaczyński's political technologists and a PiS member, spread information in the media that Tusk's grandfather had volunteered to serve in the Wehrmacht.

Looking at Jarosław Kaczyński during his speech in the Sejm, he said that his brother Lech had called Kurski a scoundrel during his lifetime.

Jarosław Kaczyński could not bear it. He perceived it as disrespect for his brother's memory and went to the Sejm podium, although he was not given the floor. "Donald Tusk is a German agent," he shouted.

The made up story about the grandfather in the Wehrmacht remains the main slander against Tusk to this day.

During the plane crash near Smolensk on 10 April 2010, Lech Kaczyński, his wife, and many Polish politicians, generals, and officials crashed.

The tragedy occurred while Tusk was leading the Polish government. The government's efforts back then were focused on returning the victims' bodies from Russia and determining the causes of the tragedy. The second canonical myth of Law and Justice was based on it: Tusk is a traitor to Poland. He conspired with Putin.

After 2010 the conflict between Kaczyński and Tusk moved to a purely personal level and remains so to this day.

The first government led by Tusk experienced the most serious crisis in 2010 after the Smolensk catastrophe. This tragic event gave new dynamics to the conflict between the prime minister's camp and Jarosław Kaczyński's team.

Tusk went to Brussels at the end of his term, where he took on the position of President of the European Council and head of the European People's Party.

Tusk also faced several of the EU's biggest crises in recent years in the European Council.

Tusk successfully managed to mitigate crises and extinguish fires to the extent permitted by his position as the council head.

In 2021 he returned to a completely different Poland. The country was in fierce political struggle, dominated by PiS on the arena. And he began his painstaking work.

Now he dreams of strengthening his political position and Poland's position in Europe and restoring the image losses caused by the period of PiS rule.