Campus Poland Future has ended, but the words of Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba are still loud. His statement on Volhynia and the “Vistula” action stirred up public opinion and some politicians.
The topic was raised by one of the audience members, who asked the minister when he planned to exhume the victims of the Volhynian massacre from World War II. The question caused a great stir. The answer of the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stirred even greater emotions.
Campus Polska. Storm over Dmytro Kułeba’s words
– Are you aware of Operation Vistula and the role of Olsztyn? Do you know that all these Ukrainians were forcibly expelled from Ukrainian territories to live here, including in Olsztyn? – asked Kuleba.
The head of Ukrainian diplomacy noted that “digging into history” only divides people, which currently benefits Moscow. He emphasized that Ukraine “has no problem with continuing the exhumation in Volhynia” and added that he had already raised the subject in a conversation with Radosław Sikorski.
– We only have a request to the government in Poland to also commemorate Ukrainians. We want it to be bilateral – he said.
Storm after Dmytro Kuleba’s words about Poland. Ukrainian MFA corrects
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry responded to the Ukrainian minister’s words. “In response to a question from one of the participants of the youth forum in Olsztyn, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister spoke about thousands of Ukrainians who, as a result of the crimes of the communist regime – Operation Vistula – were forcibly resettled from the territories of Poland, where they lived in a close-knit community,” explained Ukrainian diplomacy spokesman Heorhiy Tychyy in a statement on Thursday.
“It is in this spirit that his words about the ‘Ukrainian territories’ should be understood – that is, the territories of Poland where Ukrainians have historically lived in a close-knit community,” the spokesman stressed.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kyiv assured that Minister Kuleba has never expressed territorial claims against Poland. “We regret that some forces that are not interested in friendly Ukrainian-Polish relations are trying to place the words of the minister in the context of alleged territorial claims that the Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs has never expressed and could not express,” the statement said.
Ukrainian diplomacy noted that the rest of the minister’s answer concerned the need to search for a common present and leave history to historians. “The foreign minister also emphasized Ukraine’s gratitude to Polish friends for all the help they have provided and the need to unite in confronting the common enemy,” the Ukrainian MFA said in a statement.
Dmytro Kuleba. Outrage at the Ukrainian minister
The words of the Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs did not please Janusz Kowalski, among others. The PiS MP emphasized that the statement at Campus Polska was “revisionist”. “This politician should be recognized as persona non grata in Poland. And immediately ordered to leave Poland!” – he wrote on the X platform.
Kowalski argued that the issue of exhuming Poles in Volhynia must be “put on a knife edge”. The MP drew attention to the behavior of Radosław Sikorski, who was sitting next to Kułeba, and who did not react. The PiS MP appealed for the resignation of the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
The mayor of Chełm, Jakub Banaszek, also reacted critically to Kułeba’s statements. “I understood that there will be no true reconciliation in truth,” wrote the local government official.
Radosław Sikorski reacts to Kułeba’s words
– Over the course of several hundred years, the balance of wrongs between neighbors is never “one-sided”. So we have a choice: either we can deal with the past, which is important, our victims deserve a Christian burial, but unfortunately we are not able to bring them back to life. Or we can focus on building a common future, so that the demons do not speak in our societies and so that the common enemy does not threaten us in the future. I prefer the second approach – replied the head of Polish diplomacy.
Sikorski added that the issue of exhuming the victims of the Volhynian massacre was a “problem” and “he hopes that Ukraine will solve it in a spirit of gratitude for the help that Poland is providing it with”.
Operation Vistula. When did it take place?
Operation Vistula was organized by the Polish communist authorities in the years 1947-1950. The operation was aimed against Ukrainian nationalists and members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The aim of the operation was to cut off the Ukrainians from their natural rear in the southeastern PRL.
Over the course of several dozen months, 140,000 civilians were transported to the western lands and former German territories. The Ukrainian population was sent to Upper and Lower Silesia, the Lubusz Land and Western Pomerania, the areas of the current Pomeranian Voivodeship, and Warmia and Mazury.
The resettlement instructions gave the Ukrainians two hours to pack their belongings. They could be loaded onto a maximum of two horse-drawn carts. The rest had to be left behind.
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Katarzyna Pełczyńska-Nałęcz: “0 percent credit” is bad public policy/RMF24.pl/RMF
