Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski made a powerful point during a Q&A session on social media about his country’s demands of Ukraine for resolving the Volhynia Genocide dispute, which readers can learn more about from the three preceding hyperlinked analyses. He told them that they need to give the genocided Poles a dignified burial like they already did for the Wehrmacht, which has five cemeteries dedicated to it in Ukraine that are capable of burying 50,000 remains each. Here are his exact words:
“We will not back down in this matter. Because we believe that, first and foremost, this is not a political issue, it should not be the subject of any negotiations. This is simply a Christian duty…We only demand from Ukraine what Ukraine allowed the Germans to do to the aggressors: 100,000 Wehrmacht soldiers were exhumed and buried in separate graves on Ukrainian territory. Therefore, we believe that our compatriots, who were not aggressors there, have at least the same rights as Wehrmacht soldiers.”
Analyzing what he said, the first part lent credence to prior reports that Sikorski and Zelensky had a heated argument about this during his latest trip to Kiev, ergo why he reaffirmed that “We will not back down in this matter.” He then reminded everyone that this isn’t a political issue like some Ukrainians have claimed when accusing Poland of “politicizing” it for domestic reasons. Rather, it’s “simply a Christian duty”, with the innuendo being that majority-Orthodox Ukraine is behaving sacrilegiously.
Sikorski then went for the proverbial kill by bringing up the fact that Ukraine already gave a dignified burial to over 100,000 Wehrmacht soldiers, thus suggesting that it has more respect for Hitler’s fascist army than for the nearly equal number of Poles that were genocided by Bandera’s followers. The latter certainly deserve “at least the same rights as Wehrmacht soldiers”, but by being so direct, Sikorski risks allegations that he’s “parroting Russian propaganda”.
Ukraine and the West have insisted for over the past two and a half years that it’s impossible for there to be any fascists in this former Soviet Republic since Zelensky is Jewish despite the plethora of evidence that they do indeed exist and are even prominently represented in the armed forces. Everyone who debunks this lie is defamed as a “Russian propagandist”, yet now the Foreign Minister of NATO’s anti-Russian vanguard state which gave 3.3% of its GDP to Ukraine just implied exactly what they said.
Sikorski can’t credibly be described as a ‘Russian propagandist” given everything that Poland has done against Russia since he returned to his post last December so any such attempt to defame him in that way will backfire by exposing the ridiculousness of that smear all along. In fact, former Chief of the General Staff Rajmund Andrzejczak just told German media that Poland has plans in place to “hit all strategic targets within a radius of 300 km (if Russia attacks NATO). We will attack St. Petersburg directly.”
He added that “Russia must realize that an attack on Poland or the Baltic countries would also mean its end… That is the only way to deter the Kremlin from such aggression. To that end, Poland is currently buying 800 missiles with a range of 900 km.” It would therefore be absolutely absurd to claim that Sikorski is “parroting Russian propaganda” by bringing up the fact that Ukraine already gave a dignified burial to over 100,000 Wehrmacht troops and should thus give the same to genocided Poles.
He also threw a jab at Ukraine’s narrative about its present-day western region having been occupied by Poland during the interwar period by asserting that those of his compatriots who were killed by Bandera’s followers “were not aggressors”. Recalling the clause from summer’s security pact about standardizing their historical narratives, it’s thus possible that Poland’s next demand upon the exhumation and burial of the Polish victims will be for Ukraine to revise its textbooks’ claims about this.
After all, he declared that “We will not back down” and that those who were genocided “were not aggressors” like Ukraine claims, so it naturally follows that his envisaged resolution of this dispute in Poland’s favor will also entail that aspect as well in order to finally set the historical record straight. So long as it remains falsified by claims that Poland “occupied” what’s nowadays Western Ukraine during the interwar period, let alone during the Commonwealth era, Polonophobia will persist inside Ukraine.
This poses latent security risks to Poland that were touched upon here and here regarding Ukrainian irredentism, which remains a possibility that could become an acute one even sooner than expected after its former Foreign Minister spoke last month about “Ukrainian territories” inside post-war Poland. That’s not to hint that Ukraine might one day invade Poland, but just that those of its “nationalists” inside of Poland might carry out acts of terrorism in pursuit of that cause, thus endangering Poles.
All in all, Sikorski deserves to be applauded for coming out so strongly against Ukraine on this issue no matter what one might think about his approach towards other ones like the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine. He singlehandedly neutralized the smear of defaming people as “Russian propagandists” whenever they bring up Ukraine’s fascist sympathies and drew attention to that country’s Polonophobia as well. These are powerful blows to Ukraine’s soft power from which it’ll struggle to recover.
