From: New Voice of Ukraine 🇺🇦
Timing is everything in Poland-Ukraine relations. Problems are easily divided into those of the past, present and future.
The past is, of course, the issue of the Volhynian massacre of Poles during World War II. Both sides made mistakes in this process. The Poles ten to forget that the Ukrainians have not yet had the comfort of Poland to deal with settling their own history in peace. Ukraine, just as Poland before (and all of its right-wing part until recently), refuses to acknowledge even obvious guilt. From time to time, the Poles try to force an apology on Ukraine, taking advantage of Ukraine’s current situation. Forgetting that they themselves have faults towards Ukraine (deportations of Ukrainians in 1947 in the so-called Operation Vistula, but above all the earlier, de facto centuries-long colonial history of Polish nobility in Ukraine brutally treating and exploiting Ukrainians). It seems that the Ukrainian side’s agreement to exhume the victims in Volhynia will allow the history to be up to historians, not politicians.
The present problems are also the fault of both sides. It is no secret that the personal relationship between President Zelenskyy and Prime Minister Tusk is not the best. Zelenskyy should remember that Tusk, as president of the EU, went with him as the first Western leader to the front in 2019 and was the only one to give a speech in the Verkhovna Rada [Ukrainian parliament] in Ukrainian. Tusk should remember that conflicts with Ukrainians have repeatedly plunged both nations, and only now has the opportunity opened up for a lasting alliance on which the livelihood of not only Ukraine, but also Poland, depends.
Voice of Ukraine 