Zbigniew Bogucki, head of the Polish President's Office, said he would continue to support Ukrainians suffering under Russia’s invasion, while criticizing Ukrainian nationalist groups blamed in Poland for wartime massacres of Polish civilians.
His comments followed reports by Ukrainian media that the Myrotvorets Center had listed him as an "anti-Ukrainian propagandist."
The Ukrainian group says it gathers information on people it considers to have acted against Ukraine's national security.
Ukrainian media said the center accused Bogucki of questioning Ukraine’s sovereignty, trying to undermine its territorial integrity, and manipulating facts to fuel hostility between Poles and Ukrainians.
The dispute followed Bogucki’s remarks last week in Poland’s parliament about the Volhynia massacre.
He said the wartime killings of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Lesser Poland, a prewar Polish term for areas that are now largely in western Ukraine, should be called genocide.
The issue remains one of the most sensitive topics in Polish-Ukrainian relations.
Polish historians say units of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), linked to Stepan Bandera, killed tens of thousands of Polish civilians in the Volhynia and Eastern Galicia regions during World War II.
Ukraine’s view of these groups is more divided, with many Ukrainians seeing them as fighters against Soviet and Nazi domination.
'I will continue to do what is good and right'
In a social media post this week, Bogucki said Myrotvorets had called him an "enemy of Ukraine" and a threat to the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
"I will continue to do what is good and right, simply what is human," he wrote. "I will support people who are suffering in Ukraine because of the Russian hordes carrying out Putin’s neo-imperial policy."
He said he would also continue to "call Ukrainian chauvinists from the UPA and OUN criminals," accusing them of carrying out "bestial genocide" against civilians, including children, women and elderly people, "in Volhynia and Eastern Lesser Poland."
Bogucki added that those lands are now an integral part of Ukraine.
He also said he would never accept "honoring such figures as heroes" and would continue to demand a dignified burial for victims of what he called "Banderism," including Poles and people of other nationalities.
'I am therefore not an enemy of Ukraine'
Bogucki said that after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he coordinated help for Ukrainian war refugees as governor of Poland’s northwestern West Pomerania province.
He added he had also privately traveled to Ukraine with humanitarian aid less than two months after the invasion began.
"I am therefore not an enemy of Ukraine," he wrote. "I am an enemy of Banderism, historical lies, and attempts to silence the victims of Ukrainian chauvinism lying in mass graves. I am also an enemy of Putin’s Russia."
The Myrotvorets Center was established in 2014, after the start of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Its database includes Russian military personnel, members of illegal armed groups, officials in Russian occupation authorities, politicians, journalists, activists and others it accuses of actions against Ukraine.
The row comes amid renewed tensions between Poland and Ukraine over wartime memory.
In May, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky approved naming a Ukrainian military unit after the "Heroes of the UPA." The decision drew criticism in Poland, including from President Karol Nawrocki, Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz and the foreign ministry.
On June 19, Nawrocki said he had decided to revoke Zelensky’s Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest state honor. Zelensky returned the decoration to Warsaw the following day.
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Source: IAR, PAP