Polish defence minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz has said the appearance of Ukrainian Liberation Army (UPA) flags on Rosomak armoured personnel carriers supplied by the Poles to the Ukrainian army was a “provocation”.
He added Poland would be contacting the Ukrainian military attaché in Warsaw to address the issue.
The historical legacy of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and UPA army has long been a thorn in relations between Poland and Ukraine.
Stepan Bandera, the leader of the OUN who died in 1959, is viewed as a hero in Ukraine for his resistance to Russia. That included an alliance with the Nazi Germans during the Second World War and hostility to Poles who, pre-war, had held territory in what is now western Ukraine.
On December 20, a video was posted on the WarNews.PL channel on X, showing vehicles displaying UPA flags. Poland has provided Ukraine with 100 KTO Rosomak armoured personnel carriers to Ukraine.
UPA flags on Poland-provided Rosomaks was “a provocation that should not have occurred”, Kosiniak-Kamysz wrote on December 20 on X, adding that Poland would respond.
He said he had ordered an immediate meeting with the Ukrainian attaché in Warsaw to clarify the matter.
This summer, Kosiniak-Kamysz had stated Ukraine would not join the European Union if it persisted in refusing Poland the exhumation of victims of the Volhynia massacre in the Second World War and continued to “glorify” the UPA.
In 1943, the UPA carried out ethnic cleansing that claimed the lives of more than 100,000 Polish men, women and children in the region of Volhynia.
While Poland views this as an act of genocide, since it involved systematic and deliberate killing of people for ethnic reasons, many Ukrainians regard it as a consequence of old animosities which have led to military clashes between Poles and Ukrainians post-First and Second World War when Polish and Soviet troops cleared a part of Polish territory of Ukrainians.
The Kyiv and Warsaw administrations recently announced that Ukraine would allow the resumption of exhumations of Volhynia victims. The details and timetable for such exhumations have yet to be established.
