Roman Matys, President of the International Investment Office, writes about Poland’s reaction to the Lviv Regional Council’s decision to declare 2027 the Year of Roman Shukhevych, the UPA and Oleh Olzhych, about the memory of Volhynia, and about the two paths Ukraine and Poland are choosing between today.
On 20 October the Lviv Regional Council declared 2027 the Year of Roman Shukhevych, the UPA and Oleh Olzhych. The reason is simple: both were born in 1907, and next year they would have turned 120. Fifty-four council members voted for the UPA and Shukhevych.
How Poland reacted
What followed went according to a script we have seen before. Polish Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz called the decision unacceptable. Radosław Sikorski signed a request to put the initiator, council member Sviatoslav Sheremeta, on the list of persons unwelcome in Poland and promised to extend the ban to the entire Schengen area. Donald Tusk said such decisions harm Ukraine. Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Bosacki publicly stated that he had received assurances from President Zelensky’s team that the decision would not take effect. The mayor of Wrocław expressed deep opposition, and Polish journalists began calling Lviv’s partner cities. At the same time, news spread about a supposedly halted military aid package, which the Polish Ministry of Defence later denied.
I remember that the Lviv Regional Council declared years of Shukhevych in 2006 and in 2017 as well. Back then nobody in Warsaw put council members on blacklists.
May was the same. The President gave the Separate Special Operations Centre “North” the name of the Heroes of the UPA. The Polish Foreign Ministry called this “unequivocally negative”, and President Karol Nawrocki promised to strip Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle and said that honouring the UPA puts our path to the EU in question. A unit that fights Russia every day received an honorary name, and in response a neighbouring state threatens to take an order away from our president.
Volhynia and memory
I understand that for Poles the UPA means Volhynia first of all. Sikorski said it honestly: for Ukrainians the UPA stands for resistance to Moscow, for Poles it stands for the Volhynia tragedy. Volhynia should stay where it belongs: in history, in memory and in prayer for the dead on both sides. Turning it into an argument in today’s politics means wronging those who died then a second time.
Who stands between Poland and Russia
Still, there is something our Polish friends should hear. Today you can be outraged by the name of a military unit or a resolution of a regional council, appear on television, sign requests and threaten to take away orders. You do it in peaceful Warsaw, and not in trenches near Rzeszów or in Russian filtration camps. That is because Ukrainians stand between you and Russia. The same Ukrainians who honour Shukhevych and the UPA fighters and learn stubbornness from them. For a Ukrainian soldier the UPA means people who fought Moscow for years without a state, without allies and with almost no chance, and did not lay down their arms. That example helps our soldiers hold a front line that today protects Poland too.
Two paths
This leaves two paths.
The first. Each side recognises the other’s right to honour its heroes. Poles honour the Home Army, even though Ukrainians in Sahryń remember it differently, and we do not demand that Polish streets be renamed. We stop arguing about who was more right eighty years ago. We honour the innocent victims on both sides, complete the exhumations, and put up crosses where there are still none. We live by the formula Polish bishops wrote to their German counterparts in 1965: we forgive and ask for forgiveness. And we add our own words: we remember so as not to repeat. This is how grown-up neighbours behave when they share an enemy and a future in Europe.
The second path is the opposite. We keep counting street names, blacklists and revoked orders, while Moscow celebrates every such headline. Then the only question is when Putin’s boot will step onto Polish soil and when that soil will once again receive the bodies of Polish citizens. Polish history knows what happens when neighbours quarrel and an empire waits.
What the Ukrainian side should do
Now about us. I would urge the Ukrainian side, and above all my fellow countrymen in Lviv region, to hold back for a while on decisions on sensitive subjects until relations with Poland are back on their feet. Shukhevych will not become any less of a hero because of that. Memory lives in schools, books, families and in patches on uniforms, and it does not need an annual regional council resolution adopted without a single thought about the consequences. Knowing how to choose the moment is part of wisdom too.
We do not bow. But we will not let anyone walk all over us either.