Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski noted in the context of Ukraine's entry into the European Union and how it could be affected by differences over historical issues that when his country joined, it also had to solve problems and make some changes, a ZN correspondent reports. UA from Warsaw. The politician admitted that he was shocked when he learned that in Jedwabne, under German occupation, a group of Poles forced several hundred Jews into a barn and burned them - many did not believe it, some still deny it, but in the end it turned out to be true.
“You can accept it and work to ensure that it never happens again, or you can take the easy way out and say no,” Sikorsky notes, clearly referring to Ukraine’s attitude towards the activities of the OUN-UPA.
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According to him, if Kyiv wants to be considered part of the anti-Hitler, anti-totalitarian tradition, then it must “work through its history”.
" And, as I said, you have so many impeccable heroes who are now defending the country, so why do you need those who killed people? "
Sikorsky recalled the words of European Commissioner Erkki Liikanen, who institutionally compared the European Union to a church, saying that by joining there you can “atone for all your sins”. However, the minister himself likes a different comparison. In his opinion, the joining process is more like someone "
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“You want to join the European Union, and we must agree to this, not you,” Sikorsky noted. - This is such a club that the further you go, the more difficult it is to join. Because there are more and more things to accept"
He confirmed that historical differences could affect the negotiations, explaining that European integration also has a value component.
“This has already happened - when Croatia was negotiating accession to the EU, there, as far as I understand, the question arose about a certain leniency in the historical discourse towards the collaborators of the Third Reich. And we belong to the family of countries that do not want a repeat of World War II,"
From the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to “distant allies”: Nawrocki named 3 reasons for what unites and divides Ukraine and Poland.
Tensions between the countries increased significantly after Karol Nawrocki became President of Poland.. In relations with Ukraine, his team focused on what it calls resolving “historical issues”: Warsaw demands that Kyiv exhume the bodies of the victims of the tragedy that occurred in Volyn in 1943–1944 (such work is already underway), and reconsider approaches to honoring the memory of OUN-UPA figures. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian side defends the view that questions of history should be studied by historians, not politicians, and that the past should not influence relations between countries now, especially in the face of the Russian threat. However, the parties have not yet reached a compromise, and President Zelensky’s decision to assign the honorary name “named after the Heroes of the UPA” to the special forces unit of the Special Forces led to what can be interpreted as the apogee of the crisis between Ukraine and Poland.
Despite the fact that echoes of the old conflict still remind us of it, a new test looms on the horizon of Ukrainian-Polish relations. On August 23, Zelensky signed the Law “On the Ukrainian National Pantheon,” which provides for the possibility of honoring the memory of individuals “who, through their struggle for independence, inspire Ukrainians to be strong.”. This also applies to UPA commanders, which the Poles expectedly did not like. As a result, Warsaw once again threatened that the appearance of such figures as Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych in the National Pantheon would create serious problems for Ukraine on the path to joining the European Union.
Read about how Ukraine and Poland can get out of the crisis in the article “Four Ways of Reconciliation: How to Save Ukrainian-Polish Relations” by the executive director of the International Fund for Regeneration, Alexander Sushko..