Zelensky Surprised? If So, We’re Waiting for Lviv Deputies’ UPA and Shukhevych Decision to Be Blocked

The decision by deputies of the Lviv Regional Council to designate 2027 as the year of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and its commander, Roman Shukhevych, was an “unpleasant surprise” for the government in Kyiv, and consultations are under way to block it, a PAP source in the Ukrainian government said Wednesday.

– The decision by the local deputies was an unpleasant surprise for the government. For now, however, it has not yet taken effect, the source said.

– Intensive consultations are under way to block it, and in particular to ensure that it is not signed or that some of the deputies withdraw their votes. We hope this situation can be resolved quickly and left in the past, the source stressed.

On Tuesday, the Lviv Regional Council declared 2027 the year of the UPA, Shukhevych and Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) activist Oleh Olzhych. The decision was made at a plenary session of the Lviv Regional Council, which is the equivalent of a Polish voivodeship assembly (sejmik). The resolution was announced at the time on the council’s official website.

Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Bosacki said Wednesday on TVN24 that the Polish side has assurances from associates of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that the Lviv Regional Council’s decision will not take effect.

– This is a provocative decision; we are holding the Ukrainian side to its word, the deputy foreign minister added. He said it was “a good sign that the resolution disappeared from the Lviv region’s website late Tuesday evening.”

On Wednesday morning, the announcement about the year of Shukhevych and the UPA, published the day before, was no longer on the Lviv Regional Council’s website. A “page not found” message appeared instead. The council’s web services then stopped working “for technical reasons.” When they came back online, the site contained no information about the decision.

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski on Wednesday signed a request to put Lviv region councilor Sviatoslav Sheremeta on Poland’s list of undesirable persons, as the initiator of the idea of making 2027 the year of Roman Shukhevych. Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński said Sheremeta had been entered in the register.

On Wednesday afternoon, the interior minister said on the social platform X that, at the request of the head of the diplomatic ministry, Sheremeta had been entered in the register of undesirable persons, with a ban on entering and staying in the Schengen Area countries until October 20, 2031.

Sikorski had earlier announced the request concerning Sheremeta, describing him as a “reenactor of the Galizien Waffen-SS, author of the idea of making 2027 the year of Roman Shukhevych, the UPA commander who issued orders to expel and murder Poles.” In a subsequent post, he added: “for five years, to the entire Schengen Area.”

Sheremeta is a deputy in the Lviv Regional Council representing European Solidarity, the party of former President Petro Poroshenko. He is also secretary of the Ukrainian interagency commission on commemorations. In that role, he was present during all of the search and exhumation work carried out recently by the Polish side in Ukraine. The deputy also heads Dola, a municipal enterprise of the Lviv Regional Council, which formally conducted the search on the Ukrainian side for Polish victims of Ukrainian nationalists in Ugły in Volhynia.

Sheremeta has already been banned from entering Poland once before, in 2017. That ban was prompted by Ukraine’s suspension of Polish search and exhumation work, and of the construction of new memorials, on its territory. The Ukrainian side made that decision after a UPA monument was destroyed at the cemetery in Hruszowice in the Podkarpacie region and after earlier acts of vandalism against Ukrainian memorial sites in Poland.

The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), including the figure of Shukhevych, one of its leaders, remains one of the most contentious issues in Polish-Ukrainian relations. According to Polish historians, in July 1943 UPA units carried out coordinated attacks on about 150 localities inhabited by Poles in Volhynia, which became the culmination of the crimes referred to in Poland as the Volhynia genocide. The perpetrators are considered to be members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists faction led by Stepan Bandera and the UPA subordinated to it.

Poland recognizes the crimes committed against the Polish population as genocide, while many Ukrainian historians and politicians interpret them as part of a broader Polish-Ukrainian conflict for which both sides bore responsibility.

At the same time, in Ukrainian historical memory the OUN and UPA are often seen as symbols of the struggle for independence and of postwar resistance to the Soviet Union.

In late May, President Zelensky’s decision gave the name “heroes of the UPA” to one of the military units, which in turn led to a worsening of relations between Kyiv and Warsaw.

From Kyiv, Jarosław Junko (PAP)