Polish PM threatens to block Ukraine’s EU bid

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has threatened to block Ukraine’s bid to join the EU unless it bends to Warsaw’s demands on the WW2-era Volyn massacre, a mass killing of Poles by Ukrainian nationalists.

Tusk made the pledge in the wake of a massive political scandal rocking Poland in the aftermath of a disastrous visit by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba, who made multiple highly-controversial statements on the history of Poles and Ukrainians.

“Ukrainians, with all our respect and our support for their military effort, must realize that joining the EU is also joining a political and historical culture. So, until there is respect for these standards on the part of Ukraine, Ukraine will not become a member of the European family,” Tusk stated.

The PM condemned the remarks made by Kuleba, describing his assessment of the controversial statements as “unequivocally negative.” “Ukraine, one way or another, will have to meet Poland’s expectations,” Tusk stressed.

Kuleba delivered his ill-advised remarks on Wednesday while speaking in the northern Polish city of Olsztyn. While promising not to oppose exhumations to help understand the Volyn massacre, the diplomat urged the two nations to “leave history to historians” and not to dig up “the bad things that the Poles did to Ukrainians and Ukrainians to Poles.”

At least 60,000 ethnic Poles were killed between 1943 and 1944 in the historical regions of Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, which currently belong to Ukraine, by militants with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Some historians estimate that the toll is even higher, suggesting the massacre had up to 120,000 victims. While Warsaw has recognized the massacre as a genocide of Poles, modern Ukraine has been celebrating the perpetrators behind it as “freedom fighters” and “national heroes.”

Kuleba also invoked the 1947 Operation Vistula, a forced resettlement of Ukrainians from southeastern Poland to the west of the country. The controversial action was aimed at the destruction of local UPA holdouts, as the resettlement deprived them of the support of the locals. Some 140,000 people were deported during the operation and became scattered in the west of the country.

The visiting foreign minister said Kiev has its own demands of Polish authorities, such as respecting the “memory of Ukrainians” who had been forcibly expelled from Ukrainian territories. The remark received an extremely poor reception in the host country, as some perceived it as a thinly veiled hint at potential territorial demands. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry had to step in, insisting its boss never meant it like that, merely describing the region where a “compact Ukrainian community” has been living before the deportation as the “Ukrainian territory.”

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