Genocide Strikes Relations Between Ukraine and Poland... Again

Poland has proposed a draft resolution at the UN Security Council with a claim to recognize the crimes committed by Ukrainian nationalists against Polish citizens during the World War II as act of genocide.

In the draft resolution Poland expressed grave concern that ‘the Ukrainian government supports the Ukrainian nationalists, carried out ethnic cleansing during the World War II’. Warsaw calls the Security Council for drawing a confession from Kiev of historic truth, rejecting the glorification of the criminals and bringing them to the international tribunal. While developing the draft resolution, Poland gave special priority to ‘significant level of the influence of Ukrainian neo-Nazi organizations on the external and internal political agenda of the Ukrainian commonwealth’ and required Ukraine to ban the activity of the nationalist organizations in that country, conduct disarmament of Ukrainian radical armed units and start criminal prosecution against their members.

It is worth noting that the matter of genocide against Polish population by Ukrainian nationalists has long ago brought discord in the good neighbor relations between the two countries. So, in 2016, Polish parliament declared activities of Ukrainian nationalist organizations OUN and UPA in 1943-1945 against Poles to be genocide. Ukrainian authorities known for glorifying leaders of those organizations condemned the ‘anti-Ukrainian’ decision of Polish authorities and came forward with an initiative to recognize the activities of Poland against Ukrainians in 1919-1951 as genocide. Also, Poland has recently declared the possibility of imposing a ban for citizens of Ukraine who are sticking to ‘anti-Polish position’ in the matters of interpreting general history.

However, it never went beyond exchanging loud statements and adopting unilateral decisions until recently. Now Poland has brought up this point to the highest level trying to involve the entire world community into resolving the conflict between these two states. Therefore, in case Poland finally succeeds in transferring this draft resolution to the stage of active consideration at the UN Security Council, that will give Poland some certain leverage in the controversy with Ukraine over historic truth.