Poland and Ukraine have a common enemy - Russia - but the dispute over the massacres eight decades ago is increasingly being used as a weapon in domestic politics by both sides.
The historic feud began in May when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky named a Ukrainian military unit after the "Heroes of the UPA", infuriating Poland. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army, known as the UPA, killed tens of thousands of Poles during World War II in a campaign of ethnic cleansing in what is now western Ukraine.
On the Polish side, the heated debate over Zelensky’s move is already threatening to affect next year’s crucial general election — with the nationalist camp seeing an opportunity to score points against pro-European centrists.
For Ukrainians, the same dispute is becoming a defining red line over whether outsiders can dictate Ukraine’s national heroes, and it has become politically important for Zelensky. Russia is waging war while presenting Ukraine as an artificial state, so Kiev is protecting its own nationalist symbols.
"No one else will ever dictate to Ukrainians which heroes to honor, which holidays to celebrate, or which history to study," said Kyrylo Budanov, Zelensky’s chief of staff, this weekend.
For Poland, the UPA massacres were genocide. For Ukraine, the UPA were freedom fighters who fought the Soviets during and after World War II and whose legacy now inspires the fight against Russia.
Poland’s nationalist President Karol Nawrocki retaliated by stripping Zelenski of Poland’s highest decoration: the Order of the White Eagle.
Zelenski promptly packed the medal in a box and sent it back to Warsaw. He also skipped a major conference last week on the restoration and reconstruction of Ukraine in the northern Polish city of Gdansk.
For Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s pro-European coalition government, the potential unraveling of one of the war’s most important alliances is a painful distraction from its priority: a common front against the Kremlin. But aware of widespread national sensitivities on the issue at home, he has cautiously urged politicians on both sides to defuse tensions, accusing both sides of making a "strategic mistake" in the historic battle.
Tusk will run for re-election next year, and the big question is whether his ruling coalition will not be displaced by the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, which relies on the support of President Nawrotski and could govern in coalition with the anti-Ukrainian far right.
That makes Ukraine and the estimated 2 million Ukrainians in Poland - about 1 million of whom arrived after Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022 - a defining issue for the campaign. Disappointment is growing over the palpable pressure refugees are putting on public services, and right-wingers see their moment to strike.
Although Tusk's government is hostile to Nawrocki, it offers limited social welfare for Ukrainians, including the elderly and young children.
Playing politics
Zelensky told Ukrainian media that the stripping of Nawrocki's Order of the White Eagle was closely linked to Polish domestic politics.
"They have elections in 2027. We have no business here, this is their internal matter," Zelensky said.
But Nawrocki rejected accusations that he was playing politics.
"Dear Volodymyr, Mr. President, the dispute does not concern Poland's domestic problems at all. There are no such problems because all Poles know and understand how much harm Ukrainian nationalists have done to Poland, to Polish women, Polish men and Polish children," he replied.
Nawrocki, whose central message in last year's presidential campaign was "Poland first! Poles first!", also warned that Warsaw could block Ukraine's path to joining the EU unless Kiev acknowledges the massacres and apologizes.
Such threats are a serious setback for two countries that have sought to work together for decades, trying to overcome their difficult history, with leaders of both countries unveiling monuments to wartime massacres and Kiev recently agreeing to allow the exhumation and reburial of UPA victims.
Arkadyusz Mularczyk, a PiS member of the European Parliament, has no doubt who is to blame.
"The political class in Poland - and I think all political forces in Poland - know who Zelensky is now. They know how Ukrainians operate, that this is still a post-Soviet country with a post-Soviet mentality, where methods and diplomacy don't work, but rather, I would say, force and arrogance," he told POLITICO.
But Renata Menkowska-Norkene, a political scientist at the University of Warsaw, said the UPA controversy is deeply rooted in Polish politics.
"The president acknowledged that public sentiment has shifted more against Ukraine and Ukrainians and that "... he's not really risking anything," she said. "The dispute over history allows him to consolidate right-wing and nationalist circles around himself and his decision, and that will be important in the run-up to the election."
Poland is disappointed with Ukrainians
After an early outburst of solidarity after Russia's full-scale invasion, the mood in Poland has changed.
"We understand that Ukraine is at war and we want Ukraine to win this war against Russia, but we cannot allow Poland and Poles to be so disrespected," said Rafal Bochenek, a PiS lawmaker and spokesman.
Since winning last year's presidential election, Nawrocki has pushed the PiS camp further to the right, often finding common cause with two far-right parties - the libertarian Confederation and the anti-Semitic Confederation of the Polish Crown, both of which profess a strongly anti-Ukrainian stance. views.
"The unconditional aid and funding from the government in Kiev, as well as the indebtedness of the Polish state to finance the corrupt government in Kiev, are absolutely harmful and irrational", said the leader of the Confederation, Krzysztof Bosak.
Grzegorz Braun, leader of the Confederation of the Polish Crown and a member of the European Parliament, who extinguished the candles in the Hanukkah menorah in the Polish parliament with a fire extinguisher, called for an end to military aid to Ukraine.
"The Kiev regime is neither an ally nor a friend. "He is an enemy of the Polish nation and the Polish state," he said at a rally commemorating the wartime massacres.
These views are increasingly common in Poland.
A focus group survey by the state-run CBOS polling agency showed this week that Poles prefer policies that benefit them over Ukrainians, who respondents say "abuse their rights in Poland."
Social assistance for Ukrainians in Poland is an increasingly sensitive issue, even though economic research shows that Poland has benefited from the influx of working-age Ukrainians.
A SW Research poll earlier this month found that 51.9 percent of respondents said their opinion of Ukraine and Zelensky had worsened after Zelensky's decision on the UPA military unit.
Polish social media was consumed from a video of a Ukrainian shop assistant being harassed and insulted by a Polish customer, who was later arrested. The issue has become a widely reported national story.
PiS continues to attack Tusk and the government for being too soft on Ukraine. The party also promises a tougher stance on Kiev if it returns to power next year.
"Polish society is being treated with a certain idealism, the idea that something can be built with Ukraine on the basis of partnership. We see that this is not possible." "So from now on there should be only hard, pragmatic interests", said MEP Mularczyk.
Passions are also running high in Kiev
This week, Zelensky announced the creation of a national pantheon in honor of Ukrainian heroes. Part of the message sounded as if it was directed at Warsaw.
"The names of all the heroes who, through the centuries and epochs, fought for Ukraine and inspired Ukraine will be united and forever written in our history... no one will ever tell us how to live, how to speak, who to love, who to be grateful to or which heroes to honor," Zelensky said.
Budanov called the battle between Warsaw and Kiev a "serious mistake" but warned that "there will be more, as they say, if everyone doesn't slow down a little".
Tadeusz Ivanski, head of the Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova department at the state-run Polish think tank "Center for Eastern Studies," said that bridging the gap between the Polish and Ukrainian perspectives would be extremely difficult.
" Zelensky "He has withstood enormous Russian pressure and enormous pressure from Trump, who has tried to break him and force him to make various concessions. So this pressure from Poland - to have him give up the UPA - is hardly comparable at all," Ivanski told POLITICO.