Ukraine remains ready to continue issuing permits for Polish exhumation work despite intensifying historical disputes between Ukraine and Poland, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi says, per Ukrinform. Exhumation work at the site of the Huta Pieniacka continues.
The current Polish-Ukrainian historical dispute centers on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's 27 May decision to confer the honorary title "named after UPA Heroes" on the Separate Center of Special Operations "Pivnich" of Ukraine's Special Operations Forces. The Polish Foreign Ministry condemned the decision.
The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) is a deeply contested figure in Polish-Ukrainian historical memory. Ukrainian historiography presents UPA as anti-Soviet and anti-Nazi independence fighters. Polish historiography emphasizes UPA's association with the 1943-44 Volhynia massacres.
Zelenskyy UPA-naming decision and Polish reaction
Tykhyi also stated that the honoring of UPA heroes had no anti-Polish subtext. He noted that the history of the Polish and Ukrainian peoples contains both glorious and tragic pages.
The diplomat added that preparations for the Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC 2026), scheduled for June 25–26 in Gdańsk, are proceeding as planned and in a regular working mode.
“We hope that the conference will be held successfully,” Tykhyi emphasized.
Historical memory disputes spill into modern cooperation
The Vinnytsia-Kielce bus dispute earlier this week is the latest concrete example of how historical memory tensions have affected practical Polish-Ukrainian cooperation, Euromaidan Press reported. Polish sister-city Kielce refused to transfer 20-year-old municipal buses to Vinnytsia, a Ukrainian city under regular Russian strikes, over a street named after Bandera.
Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian nationalist leader, led the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the UPA.
Russia actively uses its propaganda, referring to Ukrainians as “Banderites” and portraying Ukrainian statehood as a continuation of Nazism.
