18.08.2015, Strategic Culture Foundation
http://www.strategic-culture.org (Russia),
Фонд стратегической культуры
http://www.fondsk.ru (Россия)
Former Polish president Bronislaw Komorowski (he was
officially replaced by Andrzej Duda on 6 August) has awarded members of the
Union of Ukrainians in Poland (UUP), including its leader Piotr Tym, with the
Knight’s Cross of Polonia Restituta and the Silver Cross of Merit. Komorowski
did not fail to point out that those awarded had made a notable contribution to the development of
Polish-Ukrainian relations. But what kind of
contribution exactly?
Throughout its entire history, the Union of Ukrainians
in Poland (founded in the 1950s and originally called the Ukrainian
Sociocultural Association) has not once condemned the criminal acts of the
OUN-UPA and Ukrainian SS divisions. UUP representatives
have always supported the cult of OUN-UPA among Polish Ukrainians, denying the
guilt of Ukrainian nationalists for the 1943 massacre of Poles in Volhynia.
Moreover, the official publication of the UUP, Nashe Slovo, is financed by the
Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. In the 1990s, a UUP activist,
a certain Vasil Vasiliv, called for help in returning ‘Ukrainian-ness’ to
south-eastern areas of Poland in an article entitled «Lemkivshchyna at the
Crossroads». The UUP is still working at this even now.
The
Polish authorities, meanwhile, are turning a blind eye in the hope of deriving
foreign policy dividends from the ideology of Ukrainian nationalism. For the
gamble to definitely succeed, UUP members are being promoted to senior
positions. Thus the parliamentary support group for
