45 seconds of voting in the Lviv Oblast Council sparked a new dispute with Poland: Warsaw says Kyiv promised the UPA year decision will not take effect
Poland is Ukraine’s main hub for Western aid, and every new fight over the two nations’ WWII past erodes the trust that role rests on.
On October 20, the Lviv Oblast Council voted to declare the year 2027 as the "Year of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)," as well as the commander Roman Shukhevych and poet Oleh Olzhych, who was a member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). This vote took only 45 seconds, according to Ukrainska Pravda, based on the council's online broadcast.
The decision has reignited a dispute between Ukraine and Poland, which had only recently been resolved. In May, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy honored a special operations unit with the honorary name "Heroes of the UPA," while Polish President Karol Nawrocki revoked the unit's Order of the White Eagle. Poland is a key source of Western aid for Ukraine, and any new conflict over their shared history could strain the relationship.
Since 2022, Poland has provided nearly 30,000 Starlink terminals for Ukraine. The most contentious issue is the UPA, as Poland recognizes the group's 1943 Volhynia massacres of Poles as genocide, while Ukraine disputes this claim. A majority of the Lviv Oblast Council's deputies voted in favor of the resolution, with none voting against.
However, the decision sparked outrage, with the Office of the President calling it a "catastrophe," and Poland's Defense Minister declaring it unacceptable. In response, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he would not support the decision if it affected further actions. Additionally, Polish officials barred the decision initiator, Sviatoslav Sheremeta, from entering the Schengen Area for five years due to his reenactment of the Galizien Waffen-SS division.
Written by urgent.news from Euromaidan Press's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
