The so-called strategic partnership between Poland and Ukraine touted by Warsaw, Kiev and Washington means nothing so long as Ukrainian authorities refuse to condemn their ideological forefathers’ role in the killings of Poles in Volhynia (Volyn) during the Second World War, former Sejm lawmaker Mateusz Piskorski has suggested.
The former lawmaker recalled how 80 years ago in Volhynia in 1943, his grandmother's brother had disappeared without a trace, with his family later discovering that he had been murdered by members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrainian acronym UPA), an ultranationalist militia operating in Nazi-occupied Ukraine which engaged in war crimes against anti-fascist Ukrainians, Russians, Red Army soldiers, Poles and Jews.
UPA leaders Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych have been idolized as heroes and fighters for Ukrainian independence by the country’s pro-Western politicians going back to the mid-2000s and the victory of the first Orange Revolution in Kiev. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych stripped Bandera and Shukhevych of their posthumous ‘hero of Ukraine’ titles in 2011, but after his ouster in the Euroaidan coup in February 2014, the war criminals were once again lionized, with new monuments built in their honor, streets renamed in cities across the country to bear their names, and textbooks touting their exploits made mandatory in schools.
Piskorski called on Polish and Ukrainian historians to honestly research the circumstances and extent of the massacres of ethnic Poles in UPA-controlled areas of what is now western Ukraine, saying “it would be enough if there was a substantive, scientific discussion, as a result of which some facts might be agreed.” He also expressed hopes that Poles could one day visit the graves and places of execution of their ancestors to “light candles, lay bouquets of flowers and reflect on the sources of debasement and barbarity which the history of almost all corners of the world is full of.”
“In the days of remembrance of the genocide committed by the Banderites in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, we do not focus solely on one of our great national traumas…We also bow down to the Ukrainian victims of the Banderites. Because the vast majority of Ukrainians had nothing to do with Banderism, just as the contemporary inhabitants of Kiev or Sumy have nothing to do with neo-Banderism. However, for some reason, the highest Ukrainian authorities have decided to make the genocidal formations and ideology one of the foundations of Ukraine’s modern statehood,” Piskorski wrote.
Mateusz Piskorski served as a lawmaker in Poland’s Sjem parliament between 2005 and 2007 on the Self-Defence of the Republic of Poland ticket, an economically left, socially right, Eurosceptic party. Piskorski has also served as an election monitor in at least a dozen elections across Eastern Europe, and now works as a political scientist, academic lecturer, publicist and journalist.
His take on current events have led to numerous smears against him by Polish authorities and media, who have characterized him as a “pro-Kremlin” politician and accused him of espionage – allegations which
have never been substantiated.