(Bloomberg) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was left devastated after a meeting last month with Poland’s top diplomat, which put the brakes on Ukraine’s ambitions for quick accession to the European Union.
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During the exchange in Kyiv, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Radoslaw Sikorski also brought up the request of Warsaw that the victims of World War II-era Polish ethnic massacres will be exhumed from the land now belonging to Ukraine – and connected to the EU membership negotiations, according to participants.
The rift coincides with growing war fatigue among Kyiv’s Western allies, with Russian forces making advances in the country’s east. Zelenskiy’s push for Ukraine, a country larger in size than France and with an agricultural workforce, to gain speedy accession to the European Union shows a widening gap with his most important supporters.
It comes as Kyiv also struggles to win support for its NATO bid – and faces shortages of weapons and money ahead of the November 5 US presidential election, in which contenders offer drastically different views about the endgame of the war.
Recent tensions with EU neighbor Ukraine, which have strained relations even during the Russian invasion, underscore Kyiv’s difficult path to wartime Western integration.
“Ukraine is in a very complicated situation and not just because of the war,” said Judy Dempsey, a non-resident fellow at Carnegie Europe in Berlin. “This is unfinished business about the past.”
Everything seemed more promising a year ago. When Donald Tusk returned to the Polish premiership, he promised to improve relations that had suffered under the previous nationalist government. The government has banned imports of Ukrainian wheat in response to farmers protesting what they say is a drop in the asking price of wheat from the east.
Officials in Kyiv are also counting on Tusk, a former president of the European Council, to be an ally in shepherding Kyiv’s EU accession path, a labyrinthine procedure that could take decades.
But Tusk also has to navigate Polish politics. As he vowed to rally support for Kyiv in his first speech to parliament last December, the prime minister made sure he would display “friendly and friendly firmness” on issues that could affect Poland’s national interests.
Memories of Volhynia
If EU accession can be discussed in political forums, the issue of the 1943 Polish genocide by Ukrainian nationalists in the Volhynia region is more than a debate among historians. An estimated 100,000 people, including women and children, died in the massacre.
Deputy Prime Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, who leads one of the junior parties in the ruling coalition, said Ukraine’s EU accession was out of the question until the dead were treated with respect. Tusk said a lot too.
“There is a need to dig into this history if we want to build a good future,” he said at a press conference in Warsaw at the end of August. “As long as there is no respect for these standards from the Ukrainian side, then Ukraine will definitely not be part of the European family.”
Of course, Poland continues to demand greater military support for Ukraine, tougher sanctions against Russia and has displaced almost 2 million people since the war began. But both countries have a painful history to overcome.
The division of Ukrainian lands between Poland and the Soviet Union after World War I led to ethnic grievances while Warsaw launched oppressive policies to assimilate the new population. The escalating hostilities culminated in the Polish genocide in Volyhnia from 1943 to 1945 and the forced resettlement of some 150,000 Ukrainians.
While Kyiv acknowledged the atrocities in Volhynia, it also urged Poland to stop politicizing the issue – and find a way for a peaceful settlement. But Sikorski’s focus on the issue in the meeting with Zelenskiy, which was also attended by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Gabrielius Landsbergis, shows that any intention to leave it for historians is a non-starter in Warsaw.
Sikorski often deviates from diplomatic niceties. Asked about the meeting, the minister said in a radio interview that he knew “how to state things firmly” – and was assured that a solution would be found. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha met his Polish counterpart and President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw this month and said the talks were “constructive” and “pragmatic.”
‘Psychotherapeutic Skills’
And while the Ukrainians expressed confidence that they had resolved the issue – Zelenskiy attended church services in the region with Duda in 2023 – the Poles said they would pursue their demands. Leaving the issue unresolved creates an opening for extremists and undermines support for Kyiv, Polish government officials say.
Aleksander Kwasniewski, who was Poland’s president from 1995 to 2005, said he worked with Ukraine to resolve the dispute during his time as head of state, including reconciliation agreements, academic working groups and commemorations.
The former president, whose father survived the massacre, said Sikorski warned that missteps in solving the problem only inflame extremists – and encouraged to take a more balanced approach.
“You must be a strong representative of Poland, European and Western interests – but also a very sensitive lawyer of Ukrainian expectations,” Kwasniewski said in an interview. Such efforts require “the skill of a psychotherapist who understands the sensitivity of all situations,” he said.
–With assistance from Volodymyr Verbianyi and Daryna Krasnolutska.
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