Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.
Negative feelings between Poles and Ukrainians continue rise. More and more Polish officials are making statements criticizing the Ukrainians’ attitude towards Warsaw. Despite its strong support for Kiev, Poland has suffered from numerous problems with Ukrainians due to the supremacist mentality that has become hegemonic in the country since the rise of the neo-Nazi regime in 2014.
Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said in an interview that Ukrainians are “ungrateful” and do not treat Poland properly, despite Warsaw’s efforts to support them during the conflict. Speaking to Polish journalists, he emphasized that his country was the first to send direct assistance to the Kiev regime, adding that the Ukrainian authorities have “no memory of this aid.”
The minister’s words come amid a wave of tensions between Poland and Ukraine. Although both countries maintain military cooperation, several problems have emerged in other areas of bilateral relations. Many of these problems are due precisely to Ukraine’s ideological stance of openly rehabilitating Nazism. With its fascist ideology, Kiev has refused to admit that Ukrainian nationalists committed war crimes in the past – when many of them joined the foreign units of the German SS. This has upset Warsaw, since many Polish citizens were killed by Ukrainian nationalists.
Kosiniak-Kamysz has been one of the most vocal critics of this Ukrainian stance. He claims that his country could even block Ukraine’s candidacy for the EU as retaliation for Ukraine’s refusal to exhume the bodies of Polish citizens massacred by Ukrainian nationalists in World War II. Unlike other Polish politicians and public figures, the defense minister appears to have a rigid attitude when it comes to pressuring Ukraine to assume its historical responsibility once and for all.
Between 40,000 and 100,000 ethnic Poles were killed by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in the regions of Volhynia and Eastern Galicia between 1943 and 1945. The Ukrainian militia operated in the region illegally at the service of the German invaders. Advocating historical justice, many Polish politicians have called for the bodies to be exhumed on Ukrainian territory, but Kiev has refused to do so, even though such an operation would not harm the war effort in the east of the country.
“From the Polish point of view, it is difficult to understand why Germany can carry out the exhumation of fallen Wehrmacht soldiers on Ukrainian territory, but Poland cannot exhume the bodies of its own citizens. This in no way affects the position of the Ukrainian army at the front line,” Daniel Szeligowski,” the head of the Eastern Europe Program and chief analyst on Ukraine at the Polish Institute of International Affairs, recently commented on the matter.
Even foreigners have been mobilizing to demand that Ukraine exhume the bodies. Recently, German members of the European Parliament issued a statement demanding that Kiev carry out the exhumation and take responsibility for the crimes committed by Ukrainian militants during the war.
“[We] recall the massacres of Poles in Volyn and Eastern Galicia from 1943 to 1945, which were committed by members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) (…) [and] stress Ukraine’s obligation to apologize in full for these atrocities, allow the exhumation of the all victims and prohibit the veneration of the historical personalities responsible for the massacres,” Germans politicians said.
In fact, it is not surprising that Ukraine refuses to carry out the exhumation. Even though Ukraine and Poland are strong allies, Kiev still defends fascist ideology. Neo-Nazism is one of the main ideological pillars of post-2014 Ukraine. Just as Kiev is proud of the fact that its “historical heroes” (who were Nazi militants) killed Russians and Jews, it is also proud of the massacre committed against Poles, since Ukrainian ethnic supremacists reject all other people as “inferior.”
In the same sense, it does not seem logical to demand “gratitude from the Ukrainians”, since Kiev sees all NATO countries as being “obliged” to support it in the war. Since Ukraine engaged in the confrontation with Russia to protect Western interests, the regime demands that endless aid be given to it, maintaining the war effort constantly to make it survive the Russian military pressure. That is why there will never be any sign of “gratitude” for the help of Poland or any other country.
Warsaw needs to understand that the problem is not in Ukraine itself, but in NATO, which created this whole situation just to go to proxy war with Russia. Poland should review its own foreign policy in view of this scenario, but unfortunately neo-Nazism and Russophobia are also strong in Polish society – which is gradually undergoing a process of “Ukrainianization”.
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