Ukraine has mooted some steps to neighbouring Poland to defuse a diplomatic rift over a World War II massacre, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said Friday in Warsaw.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky infuriated Warsaw by naming a military unit after the nationalist Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a group that took part in massacres against Poles during World War II.<\/p>\n
Poland\u2019s nationalist President Karol Nawrocki responded by stripping Zelensky of Warsaw\u2019s highest honour, the Order of the White Eagle, prompting several top Ukrainian officials, including Sybiga, to hand back their Polish awards.<\/p>\n
After meeting Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, Nawrocki\u2019s political opponent from the ruling party, Sybiga said that he \u201cproposed a package of anti-crisis steps.\u201d<\/p>\n
The proposals call for organising consultations between historians and inviting religious leaders from both nations for a dialogue, he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cI reaffirmed\u2026 that the Ukrainian military\u2019s choice of unit name carried no anti-Polish intent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Polish foreign ministry said \u201cthe ministers underlined their common commitment to develop tools for historical dialogue.\u201d<\/p>\n
They agreed that \u201cde-escalating tensions\u201d and economic cooperation were essential \u201cto fully exploit the potential of the Polish-Ukrainian partnership.\u201d<\/p>\n
Warsaw has been one of Ukraine\u2019s main allies since Russia invaded in 2022, taking in hundreds of thousands of refugees and serving as a logistics hub for Western support for Kyiv.<\/p>\n
But in the war\u2019s fifth year, Poland has seen an uptick in anti-Ukrainian incidents, especially in recent months.<\/p>\n
The UPA fought both the Nazis and the Soviets in its quest for a Ukrainian state.<\/p>\n
It killed thousands of Polish civilians between 1943 and 1945 in Volhynia \u2014 a Ukrainian region that was part of Poland before World War II.<\/p>\n
Some in the Ukrainian army have invoked the legacy of the UPA as an anti-Soviet force, a trend criticised by both Warsaw and Moscow, who see the insurgents as war criminals and Nazi collaborators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ukraine has mooted some steps to neighbouring Poland to defuse a diplomatic rift over a World War II…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[95],"tags":[762,25832,182,181],"class_list":["post-122274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-warsaw","tag-international","tag-mna","tag-poland","tag-warsaw"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116861314389364996","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}