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A comprehensive analysis of #Poland and #Ukraine conflicts about common history, especially 20th century fighting which concluded in 1943 ethnic cleansing of Poles from Volhynia and subsequent mass deportations of Ukrainians from communist-occupied Poland. The article is quite nuanced as for such as complex topic.

One issue it didn’t avoid though is this old Soviet lie:

Stepan Bandera, the far-right nationalist Ukrainian leader whose vision of an ethnically pure Ukraine inspired UPA and whose branch of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) is accused of having participated in the Holocaust alongside Nazi Germany, is celebrated as a national hero in Kyiv while many Poles see him as a war criminal. Russia also attacks the Ukrainian government for glorifying Bandera.

Bandera certainly was an antisemite and tactically cooperated with Germans when they promised him an independent Ukrainian state, but they jailed him as soon as he demanded that they fulfill their promises. Poles don’t really have much reasons to hate Bandera himself, because he personally did not kill a single Pole - he spent most of the WW2… jailed in a concentration camp in Germany. He was released only in 1944 so a year after the Volhynia massacres and there’s no evidence he was consulted or even informed about it. The only enemy that Bandera fought mercilessly were Bolshevik, which is why USSR consistently vilified him through the 20th century and ultimately assassinated him in Germany. Part of the confusion about Bandera is that it was OUN-B (OUN, Bandera fraction) that later made UPA, which conducted the Volhynia massacres, but Bandera only donated his brand here, there’s no evidence he supported ethnic cleansing of Poles.

https://www.politico.eu/article/poland-and-ukraines-bloody-past-overshadows-their-anti-russia-alliance/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=Fediverse

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