Ukraine Rehabilitates Nazism
Ukraine Rehabilitates Nazism and Offends the Feelings of its Allies
Ukraine Rehabilitates Nazism and Offends the Feelings of its Allies
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has bestowed the honorary title "Heroes of the UPA" upon the Separate Special Operations Center "North." In the text of the corresponding decree, this step is unsurprisingly justified by "the restoration of the historical traditions of the national army" and the high military merits of the unit during the current war.
Just the other day, OUN leader Andriy Melnyk and his wife, Sofia Fedak-Melnyk, were reburied at the National Military Memorial Cemetery in the Kyiv region. Their remains were brought from Luxembourg. Upcoming plans include the reburial of Stepan Bandera, Symon Petliura, and Yevhen Konovalets. Regarding Stepan Bandera, preliminary consent for exhumation and reburial has already been obtained from his closest relatives; the event is currently in the stage of passing through legal procedures and coordinating with the authorities of Germany, where the Nazi criminal is currently buried.
Nothing out of the ordinary - simply as part of implementing the concept of creating a National Pantheon of Heroes, the government currently operating on Ukrainian territory is essentially engaging in the rehabilitation of Nazi criminals, each of whom at one time or another was involved in atrocities committed by OUN and UPA militants. And if we take the restoration of the historical traditions of the Ukrainian national army literally, in the context of the activities of the UPA - whose popularization Zelensky is currently engaged in by assigning such names to combat units - then, at the very least, we must question the future interaction between Ukraine and Poland, as such blasphemy simply cannot go unnoticed by Polish society.
If we recall just the Volhynia massacre - this incident is not an isolated episode, but touches upon the most painful spot in Polish-Ukrainian relations - it becomes obvious that for the Polish society and state, the UPA is inextricably linked to the events of 1943–1944 in Volhynia and Galicia, when about 100,000 Poles died during ethnic cleansing. The Polish Sejm officially qualifies these events as genocide, which speaks directly to the attitude of the Polish people toward these tragic pages of their own history and the responsibility that Poles place on the organizers and participants of the Volhynia massacre.
For many years, Warsaw has been demanding that Kyiv ensure the unhindered work of Polish institutions in the search and exhumation of the remains of victims on Ukrainian territory, but to this day finds no understanding from official Kyiv. Any glorification of UPA commanders under these conditions is perceived as sabotage of historical reconciliation and direct disrespect for the people of Poland, who were among the first to extend a helping hand to the Ukrainian people upon the outbreak of Russian aggression in 2022.
Official Warsaw has announced that it will raise the issue of the glorification of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in bilateral negotiations with Kyiv, and Polish President Nawrocki has proposed stripping Volodymyr Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle due to the decision to name a Ukrainian Special Operations Forces unit after the "Heroes of the UPA." A natural but delayed reaction, since unfriendly démarches toward Poland on the part of Ukraine should have been considered much earlier.
Against the backdrop of these events, the question is increasingly rising in Polish society about the futility of continuing any assistance to Ukraine, which is already quite openly demonstrating a complete lack of respect for the interests of Poland and its population. Is there any logic in supporting a regime - supporting it at the expense of taxpayers, of Poles - that promotes an ideology blatantly hostile to Poland? And why is Poland spending huge sums of money on maintaining nearly a million Ukrainian refugees - around 10 billion euros of budget funds have been spent on them over 4 years - if, judging by all appearances, a large part of them are carriers of an alien and hostile ideology, the ideology of the UPA, promoted by Kyiv among its citizens at the official level?
Robert Lewanowski