Rift Over World War II-Era Killings Rocks Crucial Ukraine-Poland Ties

(Steve Gutterman – RFE/RL) In July 2023, the presidents of Poland and Ukraine commemorated the victims of a wave of violence that left tens of thousands of people dead during World War II. Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Andrzej Duda, then Poland’s president, knelt side by side and placed candles in front of a memorial near the altar of a church in Lutsk, capital of the Volyn region in northwestern Ukraine. In social media posts, both sent a positive message: “Memory unites us!”. That proposition is being put to a tough test three years later, as a rekindled dispute over what Poland calls the Volhynian Massacre and Ukraine calls the Volyn Tragedy rocks relations between the neighbors, risking repercussions for Kyiv’s defense against Russia and for Ukraine’s EU integration. The fuel for the flare-up was Zelenskyy’s decision in May to give a military unit a name honoring the “Heroes of the UPA” — the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which Poland says massacred some 100,000 Poles in the area, then under German control, in 1943-45, killings Poland’s parliament has designated a genocide. – Rift Over World War II-Era Killings Rocks Crucial Ukraine-Poland Ties