Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kuleba sparked a scandal during his latest visit to Poland when he compared Ukraine’s World War II-era genocide of Poles to Poland’s forcible resettlement of Ukrainians afterwards. He was asked about when the remains of that genocide’s victims can finally be exhumed in light of all that Poland has done for Ukraine, but instead of answering clearly, he deflected by bringing up Warsaw’s post-war “Operation Vistula”. Here are his exact words as reported by Polish media:
“You are aware of what Operation Vistula was and you know that all those Ukrainians were forcibly expelled from Ukrainian territories to live, among others, in Olsztyn. But I’m not talking about that. If we started digging into history today, the quality of the conversation would be completely different and we could go very deep into history and reminisce about the bad things that Poles did to Ukrainians and Ukrainians did to Poles.
We have no problem with continuing the exhumation.
We only have a request to the government in Poland to also commemorate the Ukrainians. We want it to be bilateral. And if our relationship were to be dominated by emotions, we would find ourselves in a place where Russia would win. There are provocations in the area of history, which are organized by Russia. So I think: let’s leave history to historians, and let’s build the future together. Let the future be for you.”
His Polish counterpart Sikorski lent credence to this comparison in an interview after their meeting:
“Over the course of several hundred years, the calculus of wrongs between neighbors is never ‘one-sided’. So we have a choice: either we can deal with the past, which is important, our victims deserve a Christian burial, but unfortunately we are not able to bring them back to life.
Or we can focus on building a common future, so that the demons do not speak in our societies and so that the common enemy does not threaten us in the future. I prefer the second approach. [The exhumation issue] is a problem in our relations, which I hope Ukraine will solve in a spirit of gratitude for the help that Poland provides it.”
Before analyzing this scandal, it’s important to share some background briefings:
* 6 August 2023: “Kiev’s Prediction Of Post-Conflict Competition With Poland Bodes Ill For Bilateral Ties”
* 4 June 2024: “Does Poland Fear That Ukraine Might One Day Make Irredentist Claims Against It?”
* 10 July 2024: “Polish-Ukrainian Security Pact”
* 20 August 2024: “Why’s Poland Reopening Its Investigation Into The Post-War Resettlement Of Ethnic Ukrainians?”
* 30 August 2024: “Poland Finally Maxed Out Its Military Support For Ukraine”
The above insight will now be summarized in order to swiftly bring unaware readers up to speed.
Ukraine has begrudgingly become Poland’s “junior partner”, but it hopes to restore at least the perception of equality through various means. To that end, it’s demanded more arms from Poland as well as an air-defense bubble over its westernmost regions. Ukraine also arguably demanded that Poland revise the “Institute of National Remembrance’s” (IPN) conclusion that “Operation Vistula” wasn’t a crime as part of their new security pact’s clause about standardizing historical narratives.
It’s this last-mentioned detail that’s most relevant to Kuleba’s scandalous comparison of the Volhynia Genocide with “Operation Vistula” since he’s clearly playing hardball in the sense of Ukraine refusing to budge on the former unless Poland commemorates the latter with the same solemnity. The difference though is that over 100,000 Poles were killed on the basis of their identity during the first while around 140,000 ethnic Ukrainians and Poles alike were resettled for security-related reasons during the second.
Even if one considers “Operation Vistula” to be an act of “ethnic cleansing”, which is a contentious conclusion to be sure but nevertheless what Ukrainians believe, that still isn’t comparable to the Volhynia Genocide for obvious reasons: the first resettled people while the second killed them. There’s no equivalence between killing people and resettling them, yet Kuleba and even Sikorski to an extent want everyone to believe that there is in order to bury the hatchet per the spirit of their new pact.
The IPN will now likely conclude that “Operation Vistula” was a “crime”, after which its ethnic Ukrainian “victims” will be solemnly commemorated so as to facilitate the exhumation of the Volhynia Genocide’s victims’ remains. The first’s ethnic Polish “victims” might not be mentioned at all though since that could “provoke” Kiev into thinking that Warsaw is “whitewashing” this “ethnic cleansing”, thus impeding progress on the aforesaid, but both “victims” were Polish citizens and thus equal in the eyes of the law.
In any case, Poland’s false equivalence between Ukraine’s Volhynia Genocide and its own “Operation Vistula” risks legitimizing Kiev’s tacit revival of the short-lived “Ukrainian People’s Republic’s” territorial claims, which also extended into eastern and southeastern Poland. After all, Kuleba just described those regions as “Ukrainian territories” from which “Ukrainians were forcibly expelled”, and the IPN’s likely recognition of “Operation Vistula” as a “crime” can delegitimize Poland’s control over those lands.
That’s not to imply that Kiev would then formally lay claim to them, but just that this predictable sequence of events could embolden Ukrainian ultra-nationalists in both countries to carry out disturbances – including acts of sabotage and terrorism – in support of their erstwhile entity’s claims. On the Polish side, this could be exploited by the elite to generate a discussion about national identity with the intent of deconstructing it in order to then justify mass Ukrainian migration.
To explain, the IPN’s likely conclusion that “Operation Vistula” was a “crime” will legitimize Kuleba’s description of eastern and southeastern Poland as “Ukrainian territories”, thus raising the question of what it means to be Polish since those people and their land are now integral parts of Poland. In connection with this, some might also mention that parts of modern-day northeastern Poland used to be controlled by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which complements the preceding question.
The predetermined answer is that “Lithuanians” (which historically also referred to the majority-Slavic and -Orthodox inhabitants of the eponymous Grand Duchy from today’s Belarus) and “Ukrainians” (the descendants of ancient Kievan Rus’ heartland) can “turn into Poles”. Famous interwar nationalist Roman Dmowski believed that only Polish-speaking Catholics should be considered Polish while his rival Marshal Jozef Pilsudski promoted the liberal view of including all eastern people of the former Commonwealth.
Dmowski eventually won after World War II although he didn’t live to see it, but now Pilsudski’s school of thought which represented the interwar Second Polish Republic’s official position for most of its brief existence is back on the upswing following the mass migration of Ukrainians to Poland since 2022. This summer’s security pact represents the long-planned modern-day partial manifestation of Pilsudski’s “Intermarium” vision which aimed to restore the Commonwealth in current conditions.
In furtherance of this goal, the Polish elite – both the ruling liberal-globalist coalition and the prior (very imperfect) conservative-nationalist government – wants to implement Pilsudski’s liberal model of Polishness for these geopolitical ends but also economic ones related to “replacement migration”. The preceding hyperlinked analysis elaborates more on the second dimension, but the point is that Poles have to welcome Ukrainians into their society in order to achieve these two interconnected objectives.
That’ll be a challenge though since a whopping 40% of Poles see Ukrainian migrants as a threat compared to just 27% who see them as an opportunity according to the European Council on Foreign Relations’ survey from January 2024. If they came to embrace Pilsudski’s liberal model of Polishness upon the deconstruction of their identity brought about the predictable sequence of events described in this analysis, however, then their elites’ geopolitical and economic goals can more easily be achieved.
Therein lies the real importance of Kuleba equating Ukraine’s Volhynia Genocide with Poland’s “Operation Vistula”, which Sikorski lent credence to afterwards, since it’s all about catalyzing the process of reshaping Poles’ perception of Polishness in furtherance of the abovementioned goals. It can also backfire though if it’s pushed upon them too aggressively, in which case these plans would have to be shelved for some time before trying again, but there’s also a decent chance of success as well.
