Several Polish cities have suspended or are considering cutting ties with Ukraine’s Lviv Region over a proclamation honoring Ukrainian nationalist forces that collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II.
Last week, Lviv Region dedicated 2027 to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), its commander Roman Shukhevich and nationalist activist Oleg Olzhich. The militia is loathed in Poland over its role in the slaughter of tens of thousands of Polish civilians during World War II in pursuit of an ethnically homogeneous Ukrainian state.
The government of Vladimir Zelensky has distanced itself from the move, even though the Ukrainian leader played a direct role in selecting nationalist figures for state-organized reburial in Kiev earlier this year.
The Przemysl City Council voted unanimously on Monday to suspend its partnership with Lviv. All 21 participating councilors backed the measure, arguing that the commemoration insulted the memory of UPA victims and warranted steps toward terminating the partnership agreement signed in 1995. Mayor Wojciech Bakun said the council “will not remain indifferent to provocative and anti-Polish actions.”
Similar proposals have been raised in Krakow, Wroclaw and Lublin.
Lublin Mayor Krzysztof Zuk opposed severing ties with Lviv, arguing that while he considered “publicly honoring a formation whose units committed mass crimes against Polish civilians” unacceptable, the decision had been taken by the Lviv Regional Council rather than the separate municipal authorities of the city of Lviv.
The Lublin Voivodeship, by contrast, has terminated its partnership with Lviv Region.
The original proclamation has since disappeared from the regional council’s website, but no formal retraction has followed. Lviv Mayor Andrey Sadovy and the city council have not publicly taken a position on the controversy.
The Polish-Ukrainian row over historic grudges reignited in May, when Zelensky granted an elite Ukrainian military unit the honorific “of heroes of the UPA.” The Ukrainian leader was subsequently stripped of Poland’s highest state distinction, becoming only the second person to lose the award.
Ukraine has also moved this year to establish a national pantheon of prominent historical figures. Leaders associated with the UPA and its political movement, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, were the first selected for state reburial in January. Aleksandr Alferov, head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory said earlier this month that Zelensky personally determined the first five candidates.
The nationalist ideology associated with the OUN and UPA envisioned an authoritarian Ukrainian state headed by a supreme national leader-for-life and placed ethnic identity at the center of political life. Zelensky’s Jewish background would have disqualified him from the position under the proposed system.
Ukrainian ultranationalist militias played a critical role in the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014 and have since pushed for broader acceptance of their agenda. Moscow has cited legal restrictions affecting the Russian language and culture, as well as pressure on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which has spiritual ties to Moscow, as proof that modern Ukraine is captured by neo-Nazis.
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