The Ukrainian Ambassador Shocked Poland With His Claims About The Volhynia Genocide

He denied that Bandera and Shukhevich are criminals, accused Poles of ideologizing the “Ukrainian Insurgent Army” as anti-Polish in an insinuation that it wasn’t, suggested that the documents proving that Shukhevich ordered these killings might not be authentic, and mocked the reported death toll.

Ukrainian Ambassador to Poland Vasily Bodnar shocked his host country when he was asked during a recent interview to share his assessment of the Volhynia Genocide. Its complete resolution – namely official acknowledgement, exhumation of the victims, and their proper burial – is one of the conditions that some Polish political forces have demanded in exchange for supporting Ukraine’s EU membership. His response embodies the irreconcilable divisions between Poles and Ukrainians over this issue.

Bodnar took a page from former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba’s book by equating Ukraine’s genocide of Poles during World War II, of course using different language to describe what happened, with Poland’s forcible resettlement of Ukrainians afterwards. He then denied that leader of the “Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists” (OUN) Stepan Bandera and chief of his “Ukrainian Insurgent Army” (UPA) Roman Shukhevich, the latter of whom ordered the Volhynia Genocide, were criminals.

Going further, Bodnar implied that Poles have ideologized the UPA by misportraying it as an anti-Polish force, after which he suggested that the documents proving that Shukhevich ordered the Volhynia Genocide might not be authentic despite Poland’s “Institute of National Remembrance” verifying them. To add insult to injury, he also mockingly declared that “These numbers (of Polish victims) grow with each decade. Now it’s as high as 150,000, and the murder of Ukrainians is still being denied.”

In post-“Maidan” Ukrainian historiography, Bandera and Shukhevich are presented as “national heroes”, while the Volhynia Genocide is portrayed as the “liberation” of Ukrainian land from its “centuries-long Polish occupiers”. Bodnar therefore obviously couldn’t contradict these interconnected historically revisionist ultra-nationalist (fascist) narratives otherwise he’d risk losing his job or worse, but he could have still addressed the issue with a lot more tact, yet he instead chose to be combative and insulting.

This in turn suggests that he himself truly believes them, thus prompting speculation about whether he also hates Poles. After all, most of the over 100,000 civilians who were brutally slaughtered by the OUN’s UPA were women and children, so anyone who aggressively defends this war crime and those responsible for it – especially UPA chief Shukhevich – must therefore hate Poles. If that’s how Bodnar feels about them, and it surely seems to be the case, then he should be declared persona non grata.

The odds of that happening, or even a complaint being issued by the Foreign Ministry, are low, however. That’s because the ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk is Ukrainophilic, and the same goes for his Foreign Minister, Radek Sikorski. Both have suggested that criticism of Ukraine and its narratives about World War II are part of a Russian plot. They’re thus unlikely to chide Bodnar for fear of then being accused of doing Putin’s bidding like they themselves have accused others of doing.

For patriotic Poles, his claims and their government’s refusal to react to them prove that Ukrainization is underway, especially after Bodnar’s scandal last year when he said that Ukrainians in Poland don’t want to assimilate. Right after, Ukrainian media wrote about a Ukrainian lobby forming in the Sejm. Coupled with current OUN leader Bogdan Chervak’s implied territorial claims to Poland in fall 2024, Poland is clearly threatened by Ukraine, yet the ruling liberals perversely view this as a foreign policy achievement.