Europe maintains a secret geography made up of mass graves. They are in the forests of Katyn, on the slopes of the Pyrenees, in the fields of Srebrenica. Some have been opened, bones identified, and an attempt made to close the wound. Others remain sealed, not by time but by politics. The Volhynia Massacres, where between 60,000 and 100,000 Poles were killed by Ukrainian nationalists 80 years ago, belong to the second category. These graves hold the painful nightmares of the continent and represent poorly healed scars from dark periods. Since the fall of the USSR, Kiev and Warsaw have had a difficult relationship due to the interpretation of their past. And that past keeps coming back.
Last week, the political conflict between Ukraine and Poland, which had been buried since the Russian invasion began, erupted again. The trigger was a decree signed by Zelenski on May 26: the creation of a unit of the Special Operations Forces named "Heroes of the UPA," in honor of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army that, between 1943 and 1945, killed between 40,000 and 100,000 Polish civilians in Volhynia.
Polish President Karol Nawrocki responded on June 19 by revoking the Order of the White Eagle awarded to Zelenski in 2023, an unprecedented gesture in the three centuries of Polish highest decoration history. Zelenski returned the medal by mail - along with the publication in X with the photo of the shipping receipt - and the head of his Presidential Office, Kyrylo Budanov, described Nawrocki's decision as "a hostile act towards the Ukrainian people" and "a gift to Moscow's aggressor."
The Ukrainian response did not stop there: three former presidents - Kuchma, Yushchenko, and Poroshenko - announced that they would renounce the Order of the White Eagle that Poland had granted them during their terms. Was it the right time for Zelenski to name that unit with that name? Was it the right time to revoke the medal, as Nawrocki did?
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, an unconditional ally of Kiev, called the withdrawal of the medal "a strategic mistake that only benefits Moscow." In the midst of a war in which Poland is the main arms supply corridor to Ukraine and has welcomed over a million of its refugees, this story has resurfaced.
Ukrainians argue that armed formations from both sides, including the UPA and Polish underground forces like the Home Army, participated in attacks and reprisals that caused large-scale civilian casualties among Poles and Ukrainians. Kiev does not deny the massacres in Volhynia, but insists that the conflict was bilateral and that the Polish narrative ignores Ukrainian victims. The Polish resistance, supported by the exiled Government in London, also committed massacres of Ukrainians in retaliation: 2,000 to 3,000 Ukrainian civilians in Volhynia alone, possibly out of a total of 10,000 to 12,000 Ukrainians in the region.
The official Ukrainian position maintains that the UPA fought for Ukrainian independence against both the Nazi German and Soviet forces. In this process, the essential figure was Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian ultranationalist who initially collaborated with the Nazi invader against the Soviets and was later deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1941 precisely because the Nazis dissolved the Ukrainian government he had proclaimed in Lviv. For Ukrainians, this sets him apart from better-known Nazi collaborators.
But to understand the Ukrainian narrative, one must go back even further. At the end of the Polish-Soviet war of 1920-1921, Volhynia and other Ukrainian-populated areas came under Polish administration. The Polish government promised local autonomy but imposed Polonization on the population, suppressing the language, culture, and Orthodox religion. For these anti-occupation groups, the fight against the Poles was also justified.
Ukrainian historian Yaroslav Hrytsak from Lviv has addressed this issue with the most honesty from within Ukraine. His position is that the UPA was simultaneously "a legitimate anti-Soviet resistance force and an organization that committed war crimes against Polish civilians." That both things are true at the same time does not solve the political problem.
This confrontation fuels the fire for Putin, who has been using Bandera as an argument that Ukraine is a Nazi state. For many, it is Russia that keeps bringing back this debate time and time again.