Kiev won\u2019t join the bloc as long as it honors nationalists who massacred up to 100,000 ethnic Poles during World War II, Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz has said<\/p>\n
Ukraine will face significant problems joining the EU as long as it continues to honor Stepan Bandera, a World War II-era Nazi collaborator whose followers carried out the ethnic cleansing of tens of thousands of Poles, Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz has said.
\nIn an interview with Polsat News on Monday, Kosiniak-Kamysz blasted Ukraine over its glorification of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), the group that Bandera led, and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).
\nBoth groups collaborated with Nazi Germany and massacred up to 100,000 ethnic Poles, mostly women, children, and the elderly, in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia in 1943-1944.<\/p>\n
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Zelensky to skip key \u2018Ukraine recovery\u2019 event over Nazi-collaborator scandal<\/p>\n
The defense minister warned that \u201cwith Bandera, Ukraine will not join the European Union,\u201d adding that \u201cno one will tell us how to vote\u201d on another country\u2019s accession. He argued that \u201cit is impossible in the EU to place on a pedestal those who destroy European cooperation,\u201d and suggested that not all Ukrainian political factions actually want to join the EU.
\nThe comments come after Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky named a special-forces unit after the UPA, triggering pushback from Poland, which has been an ardent supporter of Kiev in the conflict with Russia.<\/p>\n
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Poland presses Ukraine to drop street name honoring Nazi collaborator<\/p>\n
Polish President Karol Nawrocki called the decision \u201coutrageous\u201d and stripped Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle, Poland\u2019s highest honor. A number of senior Ukrainian officials responded by relinquishing their own Polish awards.
\nRussian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova weighed in on Kosiniak-Kamysz\u2019s comments and Poland\u2019s sudden pushback against the glorification of neo-Nazi collaborators in Ukraine, noting that Poland has been arming and funding Ukraine\u2019s \u201cneo-Nazi regime\u201d for years.
\nZakharova said Poland is \u201cresponsible for those it has tamed,\u201d adding that it essentially nurtured \u201cbloodthirsty monsters\u201d who are now in power in Kiev.
\nAs tensions between the two countries flare, Kosiniak-Kamysz addressed a separate dispute, confirming that Poland will not transfer its remaining Soviet-era MiG-29 jets to Ukraine after it failed to honor a reciprocal pledge to share drone technology. \u201cI proposed a very partner-like approach: MiGs for drones, [but Ukraine] did not follow through.\u201d
\nAn IBRiS opinion poll published last week suggests that nearly 60% of Poles are opposed to Ukraine\u2019s accession to the EU, up from 42% last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kiev won\u2019t join the bloc as long as it honors nationalists who massacred up to 100,000 ethnic Poles during World War II, Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz has said Ukraine will…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}