Ukraine’s Volhynia Genocide Dispute With Poland Is Once Again A Problem In Their Ties
Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter
Poles fear that their elite will sell out the Volhynia Genocide victims to Ukraine for hubristic geopolitical and economic reasons that’ll result in whitewashing this World War II-era crime.
Ukraine has no realistic chance of joining the EU anytime soon since it doesn’t meet the bloc’s criteria, but another obstacle has unexpectedly emerged, and that’s the Volhynia Genocide dispute with Poland. Kiev refuses to recognize the World War II-era slaughter of over 100,000 ethnic Poles in that region and Eastern Galicia as genocide and has dragged its feet on exhuming the victims’ remains. This issue catapulted back to the forefront of their ties after its Foreign Minister’s provocative comments last week.
“Kuleba Equated Ukraine’s Genocide Of Poles With Poland’s Forcible Resettlement Of Ukrainians” when attempting to deflect from a question about this, which provoked the indignation of so many Poles that their German-backed Ukrainophile Prime Minister felt forced to condemn what he said. Tusk described it as “unequivocally negative” and pledged that “Ukraine, one way or another, will have to meet Poland’s expectations” on this issue.
The irony though is that Tusk oversaw the signing of a Polish-Ukrainian security pact over the summer that included a controversial clause about standardizing their historical curricula, which was analyzed at the time as implying that Poland planed to whitewash the genocide that it commemorates yearly. The only reason why he’s now demanding historical justice is because he fears that trying to sweep the issue under the rug after Kuleba’s comments could harm his party ahead of next year’s presidential elections.