Tusk says Ukraine is seeking to ease tensions with Poland

Kyiv is looking for ways to ease tensions with Warsaw, while Ukraine will need to come to terms with its history if it wants to join the European Union, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said, according to Reuters.

Diplomatic relations between the two neighbouring countries deteriorated after Polish President Karol Nawrocki stripped Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Poland’s highest state honour, the Order of the White Eagle.

Nawrocki said the decision was prompted by Zelenskyy’s move to rename one of Ukraine’s military units in honour of figures from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), whose members were responsible for massacres of Poles during World War II.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a political rival of Nawrocki, has sought to ease tensions, saying he had received positive signals following a meeting in Warsaw on July 3 between Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha and his Polish counterpart Radoslaw Sikorski.

 “I do not know the outcome of the meeting, but I have received signals that the Ukrainian side is looking for ways to reduce tensions,” Tusk told a news conference.

 Reuters noted that some Ukrainians regard the Ukrainian Insurgent Army as heroic for resisting both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and view it as a symbol of Kyiv’s struggle for independence from Moscow. In Poland, however, the UPA is chiefly associated with the massacre of ethnic Poles in Volhynia between 1943 and 1945, in which around 100,000 Poles were killed.

 Tusk said Kyiv must come to terms with its history if it is to achieve its goal of joining the European Union.

“There is no European community without reconciliation, and there is no reconciliation without… coming to terms with a painful history,” the prime minister said. Tusk added that at the NATO summit in Ankara on July 7–8, he would ask the Polish delegation to “exercise caution” over pledging additional financial assistance to Ukraine.

 “Not because I don’t think Ukraine needs financial support, but because I believe Poland has very important obligations in protecting the European Union’s eastern border,” Tusk said.