In Warsaw, Vilnius, and Prague, leaders typically await and act on cues coming from Washington.

The veto by Poland’s new president, Karol Nawrocki, of a bill extending financial support for Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war—and potentially ending Polish funding for Ukraine’s Starlink internet service—might be an unfortunate one-off. Alternatively, it might also be an early sign of a weakening of the Eastern European resolve to bring about a Russian defeat in Ukraine.

Never mind Hungary and the brazenness with which Viktor Orbán has taken Russia’s side in the war—doubling down on energy purchases from Russia in the wake of the invasion, blocking aid to Ukraine and new sanctions packages, and even dispatching spies to Transcarpathia to see how the local population would respond to being incorporated back into Greater Hungary. Slovakia’s record has been similarly disappointing. Among the first to transfer fighter jets and provide air defense systems to Ukraine, the country’s current government is serving as Russia’s fifth column in the European Union.

There is no question that, as a regional power with an inherent distrust of Russia, Poland finds itself in a different category from Hungary and Slovakia. Yet, that makes Nawrocki’s veto and its broader context even more concerning. A wavering or a division in Poland on an issue as fundamental as Ukraine will reverberate far beyond the country’s borders—and will risk bringing out the worst in leaders across the region.

Recall that in the first round of the election, the winning candidate of the Law and Justice Party (PiS) was flanked on his right by two candidates who jointly earned around 20 percent of the vote. Neither of them, Sławomir Mentzen nor Grzegorz Braun, has demonstrated that they understand what is at stake in Ukraine. Mentzen seems too preoccupied with fighting Brussels to care about Russia. Braun—in addition to his anti-Semitism—is virulently anti-Ukrainian, keen to repeat Russian talking points about “banderites” in Kyiv.

What was keeping PiS from indulging the undercurrent of anti-Ukrainian populism, further exacerbated by the pressure Ukrainian refugees put on public services, was the figure of the party’s leader, Jarosław Kaczyński. As prime minister, Kaczyński lost his twin brother, Lech, then Poland’s president, in an airplane crash in Russia in 2010—in what some in Poland continue to believe was not an accident.

Yet, as Kaczyński’s grip on his party weakens, so do the antibodies against bad geopolitical thinking on the Polish right. Nawrocki, moreover, is far from being a skilled, strategic political operator. The former president, Andrzej Duda—also a PiS man—fought frequently with the centrist government, but he was also able to rise above partisan politics during critical moments, such as during a joint visit to Washington with his nemesis, Donald Tusk, the prime minister.

Duda also seemed effective at moving the needle with Trump and his team, particularly ahead of the vote on the most recent supplemental bill on Ukraine. Poland’s absence, resulting from a stand-off between the president’s office and the government, was noticeable during the recent visit of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders to the White House, in an effort to steer the peace negotiations.

For the Baltic states, Russia is an immediate, existential threat. Yet, Lithuania’s freshly reshaped governing coalition led by Social Democrat Inga Ruginienė will now feature the Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union (LVŽS), known for its more conciliatory views of the country’s Soviet past. True, Ruginienė has vowed to make a strong national defense a priority, and her party’s defense minister, Dovilė Šakalienė, has been exemplary on that front.

Yet, the LVŽS group in Lithuania’s parliament, the Seimas, is home to two parliamentarians from the ethnic Polish political party, the Electoral Action of Poles in the Lithuania-Christian Families Alliance, paradoxically, the most explicitly pro-Russian political group in the country. Some of the party’s officials, most notably Zbigniew Jedziński, have toyed with the idea of leaving NATO and building an alliance with Russia, and expressed support for the crackdown on protesters in Belarus following the stolen 2020 election. The party leader, Waldemar Tomaszewski, has blamed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Lithuania’s support for the anti-Lukashenko protests. He has also opposed Lithuania’s ban on Russian government TV channels and proudly sported the Ribbon of St. Georgia, a symbol of Russian militarism.

Finally, there is the upcoming parliamentary election in the Czech Republic, which will likely return Andrej Babiš to the premiership. In his unsuccessful presidential run in 2023, Babiš presented himself as a “candidate of peace,” skeptical of military assistance to Ukraine. This year, he has been mobilizing his supporters against financial support for Ukrainian refugees living in the Czech Republic and vowed to end the Czech-led munitions initiative, which has successfully accelerated the production of artillery shells in Europe and channeled them to Ukraine.

Some downplay Babiš’ rhetoric in light of his earlier, largely inoffensive, record as prime minister. Yet, to form a government in October this year, he may have to join forces with some rather extreme forces. In European politics, Babiš’ own party, ANO, has also migrated from the Emmanuel Macron-led Renew group to Patriots for Europe, where it joined Hungary’s Fidesz, Italy’s League, the Freedom Party of Austria, and other explicitly pro-Russian political groups.

The Poles, the Baltic nations, and the Czechs have formed the backbone of the regional coalition supporting Ukraine, and that coalition is not going anywhere quite yet. However, the three examples illustrate just how critical US leadership has been in managing the alliance backing Ukraine in the war. In Warsaw, Vilnius, and Prague, leaders typically await and act on cues coming from Washington.

When such signals are either not forthcoming or are ambiguous, it is far from given that the regional actors will always double down on their efforts, as America’s leading “prioritizers” imagine. Some governments might do that—yet others will be too keenly aware of their weakness absent America’s helping hand and will make accommodations with new realities. And if, furthermore, the politics of helping Ukraine becomes more contentious across the region, it is imaginable that the resolve to go the extra mile will weaken. That would be bad news not only for Ukraine but for European security—and for US interests in Europe.