Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has announced that he will talk to Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmyhal about the issue of Ukrainians commemorating Stepan Bandera, the extreme nationalist whose group is responsible for the murder of more than 100,000 Poles in Volhynia in 1943-44.

On the occasion of the 114th anniversary of Stepan Bandera’s birth, which fell on 1 January, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, in a Twitter post, published one of his quotes and a photo of the head of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Valery Zaluzhny, with Bandera’s portrait in the background. The entry has now most likely been deleted.

Yesterday, 2 January, Prime Minister Morawiecki stressed on social media during a meeting with Internet users that Poland will never forget the victims of the genocide in Volhynia.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Łukasz Jasina when asked about the commemoration of Bandera, stated that in his opinion “our attitude to the crimes committed by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army remains unchanged”. We hope that the rapprochement between the Polish and Ukrainian peoples will lead to a better understanding of their common history,” he added.

The head of the Presidential Office for International Policy, Jakub Kumoch spoke about Bandera. He argued that “one cannot expect Ukrainians to condemn Bandera and other leaders of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, who are national heroes for our eastern neighbours”.

Realistically, it is difficult to imagine Ukraine being able to give up its point of view on the struggle for an independent state. It is difficult to expect that the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, as something associated primarily with the fight against the Russians and the Germans, will somehow be erased from Ukrainian history”, said Kumoch.

In his opinion, however, the building of Ukrainian identity on the basis of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army will be very limited in the coming decades, because “the heroes of this liberation war are emerging and they will overshadow the Ukrainian Insurgent Army”.

Adrian Andrzejewski