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| Europe |
| Politicians from Poland and Ukraine argue over Volyn massacre |
| 2024-07-27 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. [Regnum] In the last few days, Polish and Ukrainian politicians have once again argued about the Volyn massacre of 1943, which is a stumbling block in relations between Warsaw and Kiev. Thus, the head of the Polish Ministry of Defense, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, stated on July 26 on the air of the radio station TOK. FM that the Ukrainian authorities, due to political obstacles and security issues, refuse to allow the Polish side to exhume the remains of the victims of the Volyn massacre. He also called this only a pretext and called on Kiev to agree to the exhumation as a gesture of goodwill. At the same time, on July 23, Kosinyak-Kamysh threatened Kiev on the air of the Polsat TV channel that Ukraine would not be accepted into the European Union until the issue of the Volyn massacre was resolved. According to him, in relations between Warsaw and Kiev "not everything is ideal" due to unresolved historical issues. In turn, the Minister-Coordinator of the Polish special services, Tomasz Siemoniak, noted on July 26 on the air of the radio station Polskie Radio that the Polish authorities expect Kiev to take a clearer and more decisive position on this issue. In response to this, on July 24, in a conversation with the Ukrainian publication Telegraf, member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Humanitarian and Information Policy Mykola Knyazhytsky called the issue of the Volyn tragedy “fiction” and “verbal PR.” Another member of the Verkhovna Rada, Volodymyr Vyatrovych, who previously headed the Institute of National Remembrance of Ukraine, wrote on social networks that there are still people in Warsaw who are trying to link the current relations between the two countries to assessments of the past, actualizing only the topic of the conflict. Polish judge Tomasz Szmidt, who was forced to flee Poland to Belarus and seek protection because of his political position, noted in an interview with the editor-in-chief of the Regnum news agency Marina Akhmedova on July 24 that the Kiev regime does not give permission for the reburial of the victims of the Volyn massacre because it is not beneficial for Ukraine. He added that if the remains were to be moved, the whole world would see what Ukrainian nationalists did to the civilian population during World War II. Schmidt clarified that Warsaw believes that this should be forgotten and Kiev should be helped, since it hates Russia more, but ordinary Polish citizens have no illusions about this. "A monument to the victims of the Volyn massacre was recently officially erected, it was erected with people's money, not with state money. Moreover, this monument could not be erected since 2014, it was a problem. But the Poles got their way," he said. In February 1943, Ukrainian nationalists began an operation to exterminate the Polish population of Volyn in Western Ukraine, culminating in the events of July 11, 1943, when units of the OUN and UPA attacked about 100 Polish settlements. These events were called the Volyn massacre, the victims of which were 100,000 civilians. Warsaw considers these events to be genocide of the Polish population. |
| Posted by:badanov |