To mark the birthday of Stepan Bandera, the leader of the wartime Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), the Verkhovna Rada, the unicameral parliament of Ukraine, on Sunday tweeted a photo of the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhny, next to a portrait of Bandera, alongside several of Bandera's quotes.
Reacting to the post, Poland’s foreign ministry spokesman Łukasz Jasina said: “Our attitude to the crimes committed by the OUN remains unchanged. We hope that the rapprochement of the Polish and Ukrainian nations will lead to a better understanding of our common history."
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Monday: "There cannot be any nuancing here, especially when the Verkhovna Rada recalls that figure who was an ideologist during those criminal times, the times of World War II."
Morawiecki added: "Please remember that those appalling Ukrainian crimes happened under German occupation, but one must not allow the slightest tolerance for those who do not want to admit that terrible genocide was something unimaginable."
Bandera remains a deeply divisive historical figure in Polish-Ukrainian relations. To most Ukrainians he is a hero who fought for their free country, while to Poles he is a criminal responsible for the murder of countless thousands of their compatriots and Jews.
The OUN was responsible for the so-called Volhynia Massacre in which Ukrainian nationalists slaughtered around 100,000 Poles in Volhynia and neighbouring regions between 1943 and 1945.
(mo/gs)