Ukraine’s recovery to be deliberated in Poland amid Kyiv-Warsaw spat
Kyiv, Ukraine – Ukraine’s president, prime minister, parliament speaker, top ministers and generals stood solemnly at a military cemetery outside Kyiv on May 22 as
Kyiv, Ukraine – Ukraine’s president, prime minister, parliament speaker, top ministers and generals stood solemnly at a military cemetery outside Kyiv on May 22 as servicemen carried the coffins of Andriy Melnyk and his wife Sofiya past them. The ceremony was about “respect for Ukrainian heroes”, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said about Melnyk, a leader of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) that sought to create an independent Ukraine and who died in West Germany in 1964. Four days after the reburial – the Melnyks’ ashes had been exhumed from Luxembourg – Zelenskyy named an elite military unit after “the heroes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army,” a nationalist, paramilitary force mostly known by its Ukrainian acronym, the UPA. It stemmed from the OUN, fought in World War II and for years resisted the Sovietisation and Russification of western Ukrainian regions that used to belong to Poland. Zelenskyy’s steps prompted a rebuttal from Polish President Karol Nawrocki that grew into a diplomatic spat with no end in sight. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022, Poland has been Kyiv’s logistical backbone, arms and aid supplier and shelter for millions of refugees. On June 19, Nawrocki stripped Zelenskyy of Poland’s highest state honour, the Order of the White Eagle, because the UPA “remains above all a formation responsible for cruel crimes against” Poles during World War II, Nawrocki said on social media. In response, Kyrylo Budanov, head of Zelenskyy’s administration, Foreign Minister Andriy Sibiha and former President Petro Poroshenko returned their Polish state awards. But Anton Shekhotsov, an expert on European far-right groups who heads the Vienna-based Centre for Democratic Integrity, told Al Jazeera the spat is unlikely to sway Warsaw’s support for Kyiv as both nations see Russia as a far bigger, existential threat.
Most of what is now Poland was part of the tsarist empire for more than a century, and after WWII, Warsaw became a pro-Soviet satellite. “In the Kremlin, they understand that such conflicts don’t have any actual impact on the bigger picture, which is Polish support for Ukraine’s military efforts.” However, Kremlin-funded media outlets “involved in information warfare against Europe will most likely try to exploit the UPA issue to drive wedges between the two countries,” he said. On June 19, Poland’s prime minister tried to calm the tension ahead of the Ukraine Recovery Conference of Kyiv’s Western backers that would be held in the northern Polish city of Gdansk, which starts on Thursday. “A conflict between Poland and Ukraine delights [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and shocks our allies,” Donald Tusk wrote on X. “The frontline lies elsewhere.” Zelenskyy will skip the conference as Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko leads Kyiv’s delegation. What was the UPA? The UPA’s emergence was triggered by a number of factors, including Ukrainian nationalist aspirations, World War II conditions and the Holodomor, a man-made famine in the Soviet Union that killed millions of Ukrainians. Purges of religious clerics, believers and intellectuals, forced Russification and deportations of entire ethnic groups also had an influence. To some observers, the UPA’s leaders chose what they thought was a lesser evil and sided with Nazi Germany, which invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and occupied most of what is now Ukraine. The Nazis pledged to disband unpopular collective farms and restore religious freedom, but did not want to make Ukraine independent. Before taking up arms against them, the UPA participated in the Holocaust and killed tens of thousands of ethnic Poles in western Ukraine, which used to be part of Poland, according to historians and survivors.
The BriefWire