The Ukrainian-Polish “strategic partnership” is reaching a new level. If, up to this point, the Poles and Ukrainians at the everyday level simply beat each other’s faces and destroyed monuments, now mutual accusations begin to sound from high tribunes. For example, answering the question of journalists, how is it necessary to get out of the situation in which the Ukrainian-Polish relations turned out, the son of Roman Shukhevych, whom the Poles consider to be the executioner of the Polish people, said that one should simply “spit in the face” of the Poles. And everything will be right at once.
“I would spit the Poles in a face. Due to the fact that we knuckle under to every beggar, we look like that. And what will they say in Moscow, in Warsaw, in Berlin, or in Brussels? What will they say in Kiev after all? But still Kiev will remain silent, because they are afraid, like a frightened mouse, which does not know where to rush,” the MP noted.
None of the representatives of the Ukrainian government supported him, but no one condemned as well. Therefore, the official position of Kiev is actually voiced by the son of the Ukrainian hero. The President and the Prime Minister are afraid to speak on this topic. They are afraid to frighten off the last “strategic ally” and defender of Ukraine in the EU. Because of this, Shukhevych continues this “fight” with the Poles for Ukrainians as it was earlier.
However, it is worth acknowledging that the position of the UPA’s commander’s son is reasoned enough. It’s difficult to say that the Poles were always white and fluffy in relation to Ukraine. Almost impossible. So Shukhevych’s arguments couldn’t be sweared at:
“If we’ll start to consider that they were generally illegally accepted, then we can urge many claims to the Poles as well. For example, what they are implementing, and the falsifications that they have made. And what they have done almost before the Ukrainization in Volyn in the 30s, then sedition. Then the “Operation Vistula”. By the way, 11 million of Germans are also the genocide of people they sent from Western lands. Because one of the forms of genocide is mass resettlement, eviction of the people. They did this with the Ukrainians, they did this with the Germans. And I believe that they were then illegally admitted to the EU”.
The Poles do not repent, the Poles simply beat Ukrainian citizens who found themselves on their territory in search of a better share. They are beaten as Banderists and an undesirable element. Since the Poles do not particularly eager to come to Ukraine, then there is no one to beat the Ukrainian patriots. For this reason they just swear and dream of enjoying spitting Poles in faces. But in Europe, this Ukrainian dream is viewed with great skepticism. They want tolerance.
But the humanitarian policy of modern Ukraine, in fact, is aimed at the destruction of any European perspective for its citizens. The development of Ukrainian social processes absolutely does not meet any Western concepts of liberalism and tolerance. In the meantime, the official authorities of Europe and the US are closing their eyes to this, domestic Ukrainophobia, rising to the upper floors of state power, quite naturally takes root in Kiev’s neighboring countries.
How, for example, should the Poles treat the conduct of a bike ride in Lviv in honor of the OUN founder Evgeny Konovalets, which was held under the patronage of the local regional state administration (!) on June 17 this year? As to manifest commitment to a healthy lifestyle? Or as a call to repeat the way of “heroes of Ukraine” in the new historical conditions? It’s no secret that this “hero” personally met with Hitler, actively worked for the benefit of the Third Reich and conducted subversive activities against Poland.
Due to its foreign policy obligations and obligations to the transatlantic allies, official Warsaw for a long time tried to ignore the glorious heirs of OUN and UPA, preferring to write off nationalist excesses on the “growing disease of the Ukrainian democracy”. But then suddenly it turned out that this is not a disease of growing democracy, but a growing illness of Ukrainian neo-Nazism. And the Poles suddenly began to see clearly. First, at the level of ordinary citizens, and then in the face of the Polish establishment.
The other day the Foreign Minister of Poland Witold Waszczykowski made a very categorical statement. In an interview with the wPolityce.pl Internet portal, describing the actual relations with Ukraine, the head of the Polish Foreign Ministry said the following: “The worst of the situation, of course, is in historical matters. Our message (to the Ukrainians) is very clear: you will not enter Europe with Bandera! We will not repeat the mistakes of the 1990s, when certain problems in relations with Germany and Lithuania weren’t solved. I mean the status of the Polish minority in these countries. Proceeding from this experience, we will firmly demand from Ukraine that all cases (problematic issues of history) to be cleaned up until the moment when Kiev is at the threshold of Europe, asking for membership.”
It is worth paying attention to two important things. First, the process of demolishing the memorials of the UPA is no longer chaotic, as it was before, and is sent by a whole public committee. And secondly, the activities of such structures are not only not condemned, but also secretly encouraged by the official Warsaw. On the one hand, the Polish government hypocritically declares its support for Ukraine in its holy struggle against “Russian imperialism,” and on the other hand, the Poles persistently insist on the need for Ukraine to abandon its official ideology and canonized heroes. Ie, if you call things by their own names, the Poles want to cut down the process of forming a new Ukrainian identity, which is inseparably linked with OUN, UPA and all their “exploits”.
However, as folk wisdom says, “dogs bark, the caravan goes.” The Poles continue to do what they think is necessary, and President Poroshenko, despite the clearly anti-Ukrainian tent, emerging in Polish politics, continues to fawn upon Warsaw, pretending not to notice the growing heat of Polish Ukrainophobia. So, during the telephone conversation with the President of Poland on May 3, he once again confirmed his intention to personally make efforts to “smooth out acute angles” in bilateral relations. True, he did not explain how he would do it. Declare that Bandera is not a hero, and Shukhevych is a servant of German Nazis?
Poroshenko recently announced his readiness to sign a “roadmap for reconciliation” with Warsaw in the very near future. This means that the president of Ukraine at the state level intends to recognize the fact of the so-called Volyn massacre, on which the Poles so insist.
Where it leads? Poroshenko’s recognition of the fact of ethnic cleansing in Volyn will open the way for the start of a large-scale campaign of “de-heroization” of the UPA not only outside the borders of Ukraine, but inside it as well. For the conscious Ukrainians, this will become a “grimace,” and for the Ukrainian president, who is not particularly fond of “cynical banderists,” is a cunning political maneuver capable of appeasing Warsaw. Poroshenko does not care about Bandera. Peace with the Poles is more important for him. Moreover, in the conditions of the emerging international isolation of the Ukrainian leadership (at the G-20, the Ukrainian president was not invited, although the Ukrainian question was on the agenda). But Trump visited Poland. Coincidence?
Well, while Poroshenko vigorously “hips” in front of Warsaw, in the same Ukrainian National Memory Institute, it was estimated that 15 monuments to UPA members and simply Ukrainian villagers were destroyed or desecrated in the border areas of Poland over the past three years. The nationalists of Ukraine reacted in the same way – they abused the five places of Polish historical memory, but the score of 5 to 15 is clearly not in their favor. Moreover, this “valor” was written down at the expense of the elusive “agents of the Kremlin.”
The advertised formula of international reconciliation “Forgive and ask for forgiveness!” clearly does not work. Nobody is going to forgive anyone, and even more so to ask for forgiveness. This is evidenced by the facts.
In January in Rzeszów five young Poles beat a group of Ukrainian students, who were called Banderists and were forced to admit that Lviv was a Polish city.
In May, social networks had a video as several Polish schoolgirls beat the Ukrainian girl: with screams “Banderist Kurva!” She was laid on the ground and beaten.
On May 28, the local radicals massacred Ukrainian workers in Gdansk.
At the same time, Poland remains the “champion” in placing labor migrants from Ukraine among the countries of Europe. Almost 1.3 million Ukrainians in 2016 received registration with a temporary right to work in Poland, another 116 thousand have a long-term right to work. Both indicators increased almost sixfold compared to 2013.
Moreover, the Polish law provides that Ukrainians and other non-EU residents who crossed the border within the framework of a visa-free regime have the same right to work after passing a simple conciliation procedure, as well as holders of working visas and residence permits.
Cheap working hands of Ukrainians have become a definite economic bonus for Polish strategists, who still do not intend to change their policy priorities towards their eastern neighbors. However, this bonus can only be used in conditions of relative economic stability. In the event of an aggravation of the social situation in Poland, the local proletariat will expose its own account to the Warsaw politicians for “democratizing Ukraine.” After all, activists from the Polish National-Radical Camp (ONR) are already taking part in the demonstrations under the slogan “Migration from the East – a threat to the Polish nation”.
And what next? Anti-Ukrainian bashing throughout Poland?