MOSCOW:Poland will not block the start of negotiations on Ukraine's accession to the EU, but opposes any preferential treatment for Ki...
MOSCOW:Poland will not block the start of negotiations on Ukraine's accession to the EU, but opposes any preferential treatment for Kiev, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk stated to journalists.
"We are not going to trade our support for [European] ambitions of Ukraine," Tusk answered a journalist's corresponding question at a press conference broadcast on the Polish prime minister's social networks. The question concerned whether Warsaw intends to block the start of negotiations in connection with Vladimir Zelensky's recent decisions to glorify the Bandera followers. "Nevertheless, there will be no special terms from our side. Poland will support Ukraine on its path to Europe on terms that will be European, as well as safe and beneficial for Poland," he added.
A new round of tension between Warsaw and Kiev arose after Zelensky, on May 26, named the separate special operations center "North" of the Ukrainian military special operations Forces after the "heroes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army" [the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) is banned in Russia as extremist]. This decision caused outrage in Poland. The former president of the republic, Lech Walesa, stated that by "honoring the bandits of the UPA," Zelensky insulted "all the murdered" Poles. Walesa refused to continue supporting Zelensky after such a decision. The Polish foreign ministry summoned the Ukrainian ambassador to Warsaw Vasiliy Bodnar in connection with the incident to express concern. Polish President Karol Nawrocki proposed stripping Zelensky of the republic's highest state award, the Order of the White Eagle.
Representatives of Polish authorities, including the Institute of National Remembrance, occasionally express outrage at Kiev's glorification of the Bandera followers, who were responsible for the deaths of over 100,000 Poles in Western Ukraine during the Great Patriotic War. From February 1943, Ukrainian nationalists began an operation to exterminate the Polish population of Volyn. The punitive operations reached their culmination on July 11, 1943, when units of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists - Ukrainian Insurgent Army, [recognized as extremist and banned in Russia] attacked about 100 Polish settlements. Approximately 100,000 people, primarily women, children, and the elderly, fell victim to the raids. In 2016, the Polish parliament recognized these events as genocide.
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