Lviv Region has declared 2027 the year of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, a militia responsible for wartime atrocities<\/p>\n
Several Polish cities have suspended or are considering cutting ties with Ukraine\u2019s Lviv Region over a proclamation honoring Ukrainian nationalist forces that collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II.
\nLast week, Lviv Region dedicated 2027 to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), its commander Roman Shukhevich and nationalist activist Oleg Olzhich. The militia is loathed in Poland over its role in the slaughter of tens of thousands of Polish civilians during World War II in pursuit of an ethnically homogeneous Ukrainian state.
\nThe government of Vladimir Zelensky has distanced itself from the move, even though the Ukrainian leader played a direct role in selecting nationalist figures for state-organized reburial in Kiev earlier this year.
\nThe Przemysl City Council voted unanimously on Monday to suspend its partnership with Lviv. All 21 participating councilors backed the measure, arguing that the commemoration insulted the memory of UPA victims and warranted steps toward terminating the partnership agreement signed in 1995. Mayor Wojciech Bakun said the council \u201cwill not remain indifferent to provocative and anti-Polish actions.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Kiev retreats on Nazi collaborator tribute \u2013 Warsaw<\/p>\n
Similar proposals have been raised in Krakow, Wroclaw and Lublin.
\nLublin Mayor Krzysztof Zuk opposed severing ties with Lviv, arguing that while he considered \u201cpublicly honoring a formation whose units committed mass crimes against Polish civilians\u201d unacceptable, the decision had been taken by the Lviv Regional Council rather than the separate municipal authorities of the city of Lviv.
\nThe Lublin Voivodeship, by contrast, has terminated its partnership with Lviv Region.
\nThe original proclamation has since disappeared from the regional council\u2019s website, but no formal retraction has followed. Lviv Mayor Andrey Sadovy and the city council have not publicly taken a position on the controversy.
\nThe Polish-Ukrainian row over historic grudges reignited in May, when Zelensky granted an elite Ukrainian military unit the honorific \u201cof heroes of the UPA.\u201d The Ukrainian leader was subsequently stripped of Poland\u2019s highest state distinction, becoming only the second person to lose the award.<\/p>\n
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Ukraine has also moved this year to establish a national pantheon of prominent historical figures. Leaders associated with the UPA and its political movement, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, were the first selected for state reburial in January. Aleksandr Alferov, head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory said earlier this month that Zelensky personally determined the first five candidates.
\nThe nationalist ideology associated with the OUN and UPA envisioned an authoritarian Ukrainian state headed by a supreme national leader-for-life and placed ethnic identity at the center of political life. Zelensky\u2019s Jewish background would have disqualified him from the position under the proposed system.
\nUkrainian ultranationalist militias played a critical role in the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014 and have since pushed for broader acceptance of their agenda. Moscow has cited legal restrictions affecting the Russian language and culture, as well as pressure on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which has spiritual ties to Moscow, as proof that modern Ukraine is captured by neo-Nazis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lviv Region has declared 2027 the year of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, a militia responsible for wartime atrocities Several Polish cities have suspended or are considering cutting ties with Ukraine\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40630,"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-40629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t