Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned that a Ukrainian regional council's plans to honor wartime nationalist figures and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in 2027 could give opponents of Ukraine's European Union membership an argument.
The Lviv Regional Council said it adopted separate decisions Oct. 20 to commemorate Roman Shukhevych, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and Oleh Olzhych. The year marks the 120th birth anniversaries of Shukhevych and Olzhych and 85 years since the UPA's founding, the council said.
The council plans memorial, academic, cultural and educational events. It said it had also designated 2022 for UPA commemorations, but Russia's full-scale invasion prevented many planned events from taking place.
Tusk called the new decisions unwise. He said they could make it harder for Poles who favor close cooperation with Kyiv to defend that position, while giving critics of Ukraine's EU bid a pretext. In his assessment, Russia would benefit from the dispute and Ukraine would bear the harm.
The dispute concerns the UPA's wartime legacy. Poland's Sejm recognizes the killings of Polish civilians in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia as genocide. The Lviv council's decisions, meanwhile, call for the group's commemoration.
Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Bosacki said in an Oct. 21 interview with Polsat News that officials in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office had assured Warsaw that a council resolution would not take effect. Bosacki said Poland expected that assurance to be fulfilled.
Later that day, Ukraine's Foreign Ministry called the regional decisions counterproductive to relations with Poland and said the council had not consulted central authorities. The ministry said Kyiv was ready to address disputes through diplomacy and urged Warsaw to avoid steps that could hinder improving ties.
The council's Oct. 20 announcement was accessible on its website when checked. No formal change to its three decisions has been established.
