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In the last few months alone, events that took place 80 years ago and their interpretation have caused at least two crises in relations between Ukraine and Poland.
The May decision of Vladimir Zelensky to grant the honorary title “named after the heroes of the UPA” to one of the units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces led first to the deprivation of the Ukrainian president of Poland’s highest state award by the decision of his Polish colleague, and then to a whole “order fall”, when a number of Ukrainian politicians refused their Polish awards as a sign of solidarity.
The resonance regarding the decision of the Lviv Regional Council on October 20 to declare 2027 the year of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and its commander-in-chief Roman Shukhevych was less, but for some time this topic hit the front pages of the Polish media.
This time, Kyiv seems to have done everything to nip a possible scandal in the bud: the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry called the decision of the Lviv Regional Council “counterproductive,” and a number of metropolitan politicians loudly reprimanded the local deputies for their untimely initiative. Information about this decision disappeared from the regional council’s website and its social networks, and the question of whether it will come into force—an unnamed high-ranking associate of Zelensky allegedly promised his Polish colleagues that this would not happen—remains open.
We talked with politicians, historians and sociologists on both sides of the border and tried to formulate patterns of exacerbation of historical disputes, their course, as well as ways to prevent new conflicts.
Conclusion one. It won't go away on its own
One of the main misconceptions that Ukrainian and Polish societies harbor in relation to each other is the naive belief that (insert as appropriate - elections will be held, counterparts will read the “correct” books, another scandal will die down) and society on the other side of the border will calm down, “accept”, and with it, even if not immediately, it will be possible to work and conduct a dialogue in clear and understandable terms.
But there is nothing to indicate that this is in principle possible in the near future.
The myth of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which fought a difficult and initially hopeless struggle for an independent Ukraine against two bloodthirsty empires - Hitler's Germany and Stalin's USSR - and continued even after the end of World War II, all too clearly rhymes with Ukraine's current struggle for independence against Putin's Russia.
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Sociologists record a sharp increase in positive attitudes towards the UPA and Stepan Bandera in Ukraine after February 2022. A study conducted in August of this year by the Rating group showed that 74% of Ukrainians have a positive attitude towards the UPA soldiers (even in the east of the country, where the attitude towards the rebels is believed to be more cautious, this answer was given by 54% of respondents).
As part of the same study, respondents were asked to name three people whom they considered the most outstanding Ukrainians. Stepan Bandera took a confident fourth place in the final table, and UPA commander-in-chief Roman Shukhevych took 19th.
The red and black banner used by the UPA can now often be seen in Ukraine, and usually in isolation from the context of the 1940s-50s - for example, such banners are often installed on the graves of fallen Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers.
In turn, for Poles, the memory of the Volyn tragedy is also part of the national myth. For them, this is a story about the brutal mass murder of civilians, including women, the elderly and children, organized by armed people realizing their sick vision of building a mono-ethnic Ukrainian state. In other words, in this picture of the world, tens of thousands of Poles were killed solely because they were Poles. In this sense, it is significant that the events of 1942-44 in Poland are called the Volyn crime or the Volyn massacre, considering that the word “tragedy”, adopted in Ukraine, gives them the connotation of a natural disaster that could not be avoided.
No, the Poles believe, it was not a force of nature, but a planned act of genocide, which was carried out by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The reaction to its red and black banner in today's Poland could only be compared with the perception of the Nazi flag with a swastika, if someone decided to unfurl it in the central square of any European capital.
Both the Ukrainian and Polish narratives, created over the past years around the topic of the UPA and Stepan Bandera, are finally formed and, by and large, hermetic. To such an extent that remarks that sincerely seem constructive to each side - for example, “You have so many heroes, why don’t you honor any others, and not these” from the Poles or “Why even talk today about long-forgotten events of 80 years ago” from the Ukrainians - only provoke aggression from their counterparts.
It goes without saying that such an emotionally powerful narrative, which is also firmly rooted in the mass consciousness, is used for their own purposes by politicians in both countries - especially in Poland, where, unlike Ukraine, active political life did not stop after 2022.
Conclusion two. Historians will not agree
Very often - especially from Ukrainian politicians and commentators - you can hear about a simple way in which, in their opinion, the Ukrainian-Polish historical problems could be solved. Namely, to introduce a kind of moratorium on the discussion of these issues at any venue except for conferences of researchers specializing in the history of Ukraine and Poland during the Second World War. And after they come to some kind of consensus, accept it and agree with it.
This approach won't work either.
Firstly, because it is too reminiscent of an attempt to shift responsibility for hard and, very likely, thankless work onto someone else’s head.
Secondly, one should not overestimate the influence of discussions between academic historians on the real political life of both countries. In May 2026, the first Ukrainian-Polish Congress of Historians in many years took place in the town of Baranów Sandomierzki, during which more than a hundred scientists from both countries had the opportunity to have a good discussion with each other. Everyone liked everything, no one got into a fight with anyone, the participants unanimously recognized the event as a success and decided to meet again. But less than three weeks after its closure, President Vladimir Zelensky signed the same decree naming one of the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine the name “Heroes of the UPA.” A sharp reaction from Warsaw immediately followed, a “fall of the Order” and, perhaps, the most serious crisis in relations between the countries in recent years.
“Relations between historians and between politicians are two parallel realities; they do not intersect with each other,” a BBC interlocutor from the Ukrainian government stated then.
But perhaps the most important thing is that it is not at all a fact that historians can “agree” and, relatively speaking, write such a textbook about the events in Volyn that it can be recommended to both Ukrainian and Polish schoolchildren.
In principle, both Ukrainian and Polish historians agree that the killings of civilians that took place in the 1940s in Volyn are war crimes, no matter what the nationality of those killed was or the nationality of their killers. Scientists from both countries agree that relations between Ukraine and Poland today should be based on historical truth. This is where the similarities in positions end.
Because most Ukrainian researchers of that period consider the events in Volyn as a Ukrainian-Polish war, which took place within the framework of the “big” Second World War, with all the ensuing consequences. Polish historians fundamentally reject such “symmetry” and argue that we need to talk about the targeted extermination of the Polish civilian population by Ukrainian nationalists and individual “retaliatory actions” by the Polish underground.
image copyrightMarek Gorczynski
Polish researchers say that the commander-in-chief of the UPA, Roman Shukhevych, personally signed an order ordering the destruction of all Poles in Volyn, and therefore consider the entire UPA a criminal organization. Their Ukrainian colleagues question the very existence of this document and say that the possible crimes of individual rebels do not provide grounds for accusations against the entire army.
In the end, the parties cannot even agree on the estimate of the number of victims of the events in Volyn: since the 1990s, Polish historiography has been using a figure of approximately one hundred thousand dead, acting. The head of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, Karol Poleevsky, now speaks of approximately 130 thousand victims; most Ukrainian historians consider both of these figures to be greatly inflated.
Conclusion three. There won't be a right time
Another fundamental difference between Ukraine and Poland when it comes to issues of complex shared history is whether now is the right time to raise (let alone resolve) such sensitive issues.
In Kyiv they say: we are waging an existential struggle for the very existence of our state, our people. Let's perhaps postpone the issue of people killed almost a century ago until the post-war future, and now concentrate on helping the living?
This position is rejected in Warsaw: if you listen to Ukraine, there will never be a right time to resolve this issue.
“We raised this issue even under Kwasniewski, and under Duda we constantly raised it. But Ukraine took the position: let’s do it later. In Kyiv they believed: Poland will always support us anyway, so sooner or later it will naturally forget about this topic. Meanwhile, they cultivated the image of the UPA as fighters for an independent Ukraine,” says a senior Polish politician involved in the country’s foreign policy.
The summer scandal with the unit of the Armed Forces of Ukraine named after the Heroes of the UPA and the subsequent “fall of the order” became a kind of turning point in the “historical” relations of the two countries: Kyiv finally realized the importance of this issue for Warsaw, Warsaw saw that it would be difficult to put pressure on Kyiv in this regard.
In this sense, the statement of the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Kirill Budanov, made by him after what most commentators believed was an unsuccessful trip to Warsaw in order to resolve the conflict, was indicative. “Ukraine will not accept ultimatums from anyone in this world. The last one who tried to give us an ultimatum was the Russian Federation. No offense to Poland, but it (Russia) is a little more powerful than Poland. And we still didn’t accept it. Yes, it’s hard, there’s a lot of blood. But we did not even accept their ultimatum. So why would anyone think that we would accept anything different from the other side? There is no need to talk to us with ultimatums,” he said in an interview with RBC-Ukraine.
Photo credit: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Several BBC interlocutors in Warsaw made reference to this statement, assessing it differently, but paying tribute to the degree of rhetoric that Kyiv is ready to go to in this conflict.
Awareness of the likely consequences of further escalation of this conflict became the main factor for both sides to take all steps towards de-escalation.
“There seemed to be a feeling [on both sides] that it was better not to escalate further, but to cooperate, and [the parties] understood the roots of the problem - that neither side wanted anything bad,” a Ukrainian government source tells the BBC.
On July 8, 2026, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the process of Ukraine’s accession to the EU, which, at the insistence of Polish MEPs, included criticism of Zelensky’s decision on the name of the ill-fated unit of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. With this, that scandal, by and large, was settled, and even traditional events marking the anniversary of the events in Volyn on July 11 took place in Poland, contrary to Kyiv’s fears, without significant provocations.
The recent decision of the Lviv Regional Council, and especially the quick critical reaction to it from Kyiv, as well as the “on duty”, without excessive escalation, response to the situation from Warsaw showed that at this stage neither Ukraine nor Poland are interested in inciting a conflict where this can be avoided.
Moreover, both sides are becoming aware of what can be done to, if not insure against the recurrence of such crises, then, if possible, reduce their likelihood to a minimum.
You need to separate the tracks
image copyrightEPA
Both Ukrainian and Polish authorities today realize that cooperation between countries that call each other strategic partners and consider Russia the main threat to their security is being held back by the “brake” in the form of the Ukrainian-Polish “memory war.”
In this situation, politicians and experts from both countries regularly voice a proposal to include issues of the complex historical past in a separate track of bilateral relations and make every effort to ensure that they do not affect cooperation between Ukraine and Poland in other areas, primarily in the field of security.
This proposal is especially relevant now, when the Polish authorities are openly talking about the likely increase in the level of hybrid and other threats from Russia this winter.
“Russian plans, according to intelligence services, include hybrid attacks using drones and missiles against states supporting Ukraine, including Poland... Potential strikes will be “random” in nature - in order to paralyze or at least weaken the readiness of NATO countries to retaliate in the event of aggression against one of the member countries of the Alliance,” Prime Minister Donald said, speaking in the Polish parliament on September 17 this year. Tusk.
“We (Ukraine and Poland) are just trying not to irritate each other. There is an understanding that cooperation gives both sides more, especially against the backdrop of new threats to Russia in the context of the Baltics and Kaliningrad,” a senior source in the Ukrainian government tells the BBC.
Continuation of cooperation with Ukraine in the field of security is also supported by the majority of Polish society. The “big” parties in the Polish political scene are unanimous that refusing to support Kyiv militarily is tantamount to shooting oneself in the foot for Warsaw.
Back in 2024, when, against the backdrop of another aggravation in Ukrainian-Polish relations, the leader of the far-right Confederation party Slawomir Menzen proposed limiting the operation of the airport in Rzeszow, a key logistics hub for the supply of Western weapons to Ukraine, as a “punishment” for Kyiv, this idea was publicly rejected at the highest level of government.
“Such proposals are absurd. The result of this will be the defeat of Ukraine,” Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski said at the time, suggesting that Menzen would like to see Russian troops on the current Polish-Ukrainian border.
The story that happened last week looks even more strange, when a source in the Ukrainian government told several Kyiv media outlets at once that the high-profile decision of the Lvov regional council was the reason for the delay by the Polish side of an important and large package of military assistance for Ukraine.
“Yes, if Shukhevych was alive, he would be the first to go to these deputies and ask: guys, what are you doing?” - an informed source in the Ukrainian government does not hold back his emotions in a conversation with the BBC, describing this situation.
Official Warsaw immediately rejected these accusations. “Poland, as before, helps and will help Ukraine, because this is also the Polish national interest,” Deputy Minister of Defense of Poland Cezary Tomczyk told WP.pl.
However, the BBC's interlocutors in the Ukrainian government insist that the provision of a pre-agreed aid package was jeopardized due to "an irresponsible and untimely decision by local deputies."
However, after the situation was resolved through closed channels, it was possible to unblock this supply, a BBC source reported on October 29. On the same day, Polish media reported that Warsaw would transfer a large package of military assistance to Kyiv.
The BBC's interlocutors in the Polish government agree that the “historical” squabbles with Ukraine in any case affect the general climate of bilateral relations. At a minimum, says Deputy Minister of Defense of Poland Pavel Zalewski, even for completely pro-Ukrainian politicians, against the backdrop of such scandals, it becomes more difficult to explain to Polish society why Ukraine should be considered a country friendly to Poland, why the Poles should continue to help it.
Again, the summer conflict over the orders was the reason why Vladimir Zelensky changed the route of his foreign visits for some time - now they began not in the Polish Rzeszow, but in the Moldovan Chisinau.
In a word, it is still not possible to separate historical issues from all other issues in Ukrainian-Polish relations, no matter how hard we try.
And this, says the BBC’s interlocutor in Kyiv diplomatic circles, could become a deterrent for potential future Ukrainian-Polish projects.
EU negotiations
The key area of relations between Kyiv and Warsaw is the European integration of Ukraine.
On the one hand, most of the Polish political elite are confident that Poland’s national interest lies in Ukraine gaining membership in the European Union. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has repeatedly repeated that his country will not create obstacles for Kyiv at the current stage of its rapprochement with the EU - namely, it will not block the opening of any of the six negotiation clusters for joining the European Union. Currently, four of them are open, and the main obstacle to the complete completion of this stage is considered to be the position of Hungary.
On the other hand, voices are heard every now and then from Warsaw that Poland is going to use the European integration of Ukraine as an argument in a dispute about history.
The current President of Poland, Karol Nawrocki, even before taking office, in January 2025, stated that he “does not see Ukraine in any structure of either the EU or NATO until civilizational matters so important for Poland are resolved,” referring specifically to the historical scores for Volyn. His position has not changed since then. According to Polish law, it is the president who, with his signature, will have to give final consent on behalf of his country to the accession of a new member to the EU.
Navrotsky’s political opponent, First Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Defense Vladislav Kosinyak-Kamysh this summer formulated his position on this matter even more clearly: “Ukraine will not join the European Union with Bandera.”
BBC sources in the Ukrainian government say that the topic of a complex historical past is not raised during bilateral negotiations on Ukraine’s European integration.
However, the head of the Polish Foreign Ministry, Radoslaw Sikorski, at a meeting with Ukrainian journalists organized in early October by the Warsaw Mieroszewski Center, frankly said: historical issues will not influence the opening of negotiation clusters, but may well influence the closure, that is, the final decision on the end of negotiations and Ukraine’s actual accession to the EU.
European integration, Sikorsky said, contains an ideological element. And integral nationalism, which, according to the minister, was professed by the UPA, is not compatible with either the Polish constitution or European values. “So, for your own good and for the good of our relationship, think about who you want to honor,” he concluded.
“In the end, it is you who want to join the European Union, and we must agree to your entry, and not vice versa,” Sikorsky said with disarming sincerity.
Negotiations on Ukraine's accession to the European Union are very far from completion, and it is not entirely clear what form Polish demands may take and how Ukraine will react to them.
However, the BBC's interlocutors in Kyiv already fear that the discussions will resemble the disputes that North Macedonia has had and is having with its neighbors. This country had to change its name at the request of Greece and is still engaged in discussions about historical issues and the wording in its own constitution with Bulgaria.
Photo copyright: Reuters
What to do now
“We now have two main tasks - to survive in this war and to become a member of the EU. Absolutely all our actions must be subject to their implementation,” a source in Ukrainian diplomatic circles tells the BBC.
In this logic, which, however, is not openly supported by some Ukrainian politicians, the priority is to reduce the degree of tension in the Ukrainian-Polish “memory war.”
From senior interlocutors in Warsaw, the BBC hears about two steps that, in their opinion, Kyiv can take for this purpose with minimal damage to itself.
Firstly, we are talking about stopping the glorification of controversial characters in our shared history at the state level.
In other words, Warsaw does not expect Ukraine to demolish monuments, rename streets and immediately disappear red and black flags, including from new military cemeteries.
“We understand that a grassroots cult that emerged during wartime, which really does not have an anti-Polish sound, is one thing, but the presidential decree on the same UPA is completely different,” says Dr. Grzegorz Motyka, a leading Polish historian specializing in the study of events in Volyn.
The second step, which, according to the BBC's interlocutors, would help smooth out the current contradictions is the continuation of the exhumations of victims of the events in Volyn.
Even during the presidency of Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine stopped issuing permits to Polish specialists to conduct search and exhumation work on its territory - this happened after a series of acts of vandalism at Ukrainian memorial sites in eastern Poland. In the fall of 2024, Kyiv announced that it was lifting the ban, and this, by general recognition, significantly improved the climate of bilateral relations.
In response to the adoption of a resonant decision by the Lviv Regional Council, the head of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs initiated the introduction of a five-year ban on entry into the Schengen zone for the initiator of this decision, regional council deputy Svyatoslav Sheremet - among other things, a well-known historian and one of the key figures in organizing both Polish exhumations on the territory of Ukraine and Ukrainian ones on the territory of Poland.
In a conversation with the BBC, Sheremeta said he was “surprised” by this decision, while at the same time categorically denying that sanctions against him could affect the progress of Polish exhumations in Ukraine.
Но это — о будущем. Right now, when several Polish cities have announced the termination of partnership agreements with Lviv, city authorities are reacting to this with silence - despite the fact that formally the city of Lviv has nothing to do with the decision of the regional council.
“These agreements were really important, but we do not plan to make any statements on this matter, because Kyiv received a convincing request not to comment on anything and not to deepen the scandal in any way,” a member of the Lviv mayor’s team tells the BBC.
“There is constant communication with local authorities on such matters. And I was with the Lviv regional council, too, but there the desire to promote myself temporarily overcame common sense,” a high-ranking source in the Ukrainian government comments on the situation for the BBC.
Two weeks later, the decision of the Lviv Regional Council, which the Poles did not like, has not yet entered into legal force - on October 28, this was confirmed by the local governor, Maxim Kozitsky. BBC sources suspect that the head of the regional council, a member of the presidential Servant of the People party, Yuri Kholod, simply does not sign it - this is not very consistent with the law, but it seems to fully contribute to the goal - to avoid escalation at any cost.
So far, it seems that the Ukrainian authorities are managing to cool the intensity of passions: last week, Polish Minister of Education Barbara Nowacka arrived in Lviv for a visit. Together with her Ukrainian colleague Andrey Butenko and Charge d'Affaires of Poland in Kyiv Piotr Łukasiewicz, she visited the Cemetery of Eaglets, another historical site of complex fate, located in Lviv. This gesture, it seems, can be read as a signal that the conflict caused by the high-profile decision of the regional council can be considered resolved.
The way Kyiv and Warsaw handled this situation shows that the parties have at least learned their lessons from the more serious summer crisis, and are truly committed to being as constructive as possible.
“We don’t argue about history, but at the same time we don’t give up on fundamental things. We simply remember our own, but do not escalate where we can hurt someone,” a source in the Ukrainian government describes Kyiv’s general strategy in “historical relations” with Warsaw.
Now it is time to wonder whether Warsaw will be able to adhere to the same strategy if at some point a similar challenge arises before it. Events in Poland show that the country is smoothly entering an election campaign that promises to be the hottest in the country's history and during which it will be easy to upset the fragile balance that was recently achieved.
With the participation of Vitaly Chervonenko
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