July 17 (Reuters) – President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday took steps to repair a rift with key ally Poland over his decision in May to name a Ukrainian army unit in honour of World War Two fighters who killed Poles.
Zelenskiy chaired a meeting of senior officials devoted to relations with Poland and pledged to expand investigations into those killings by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a pro-independence armed group, and open intelligence files.
Zelenskiy told the meeting that improved ties were critical in view of Poland’s considerable help to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion of its smaller neighbour in 2022. Polish President Karol Nawrocki stripped Zelenskiy of Poland’s top honour after he announced the naming plan.
“The priorities are clear: All of us in Europe need good neighbourly, equal, and mutually beneficial relations built on respect,” Zelenskiy wrote on X after the meeting.
“Poland provided significant support to Ukraine after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, and we are grateful to Poland.”
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk welcomed Zelenskiy’s comments. “We are ready for a serious and friendly dialogue on the issues that unite us and those that divide us today,” Tusk wrote on X.
At the meeting, Zelenskiy pledged new diplomatic measures to ease tensions and said officials would open the archives of the Security Service of Ukraine and the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine on mass killings of ethnic Polish civilians in the Volhynia region, now in northwestern Ukraine.
Historians say that the UPA and allied nationalist forces killed 70,000 to 100,000 Poles there from 1943 to 1945, seeking to remove the population from future Ukrainian territory. Thousands of Ukrainians died in reprisal killings.
Zelenskiy said more effort would be made to exhume victims, expand dialogue and provide resources to a Ukrainian history institute.
Ukrainian officials have given no indication that they will rescind the decision to name the army unit after the UPA, saying it is up to Ukraine to decide which heroes it is to honour.
Some Ukrainians regard the UPA as heroic for fighting against both Nazi German invaders and Soviet troops and as a symbol of Kyiv’s struggle for independence from Moscow.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski and Oleksandr Kozhukhar and by Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk in Warsaw; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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