Tim Kirby
Poland's sudden outrage over Zelensky honoring WWII UPA killers is suspicious - after years of turning a blind eye, why now?
A seeming rift is growing between Polish officials and Kiev, or at the very least with Zelensky personally, over the issue of his support for the historical Ukrainians who committed many heinous acts of terror against the Poles during WWII. But multiple years into the war why is this happening now ? Does some sort of animosity over an ancient issue really have an effect on the policy of an EU nation ? Has media tension led to anything actually changing in practical terms ? Let's breakdown this curious case, as many of its aspects are somewhat odd to say the least.
A few years of war were fine... until they weren't
Although the statistics vary greatly in terms of quality/reliability, throughout the entire Special Military Operation (SMO) the number one supporter of Kiev in terms of mercenaries has been Poland. From a Moscow standpoint these are obviously regular Polish troops sheep-dipped into this role and Poland is an active participant in all of this playing by proxy war rules. The following quote from " War against Fakes" is very reflective of numbers presented by the Russian media, that is to say what many, including officials, believe:
"The Russian Defense Ministry today reminded that the era of mercenaries coming to Ukraine for a"safari on Russians"is not going to last very long.
Poland is the leader in terms of the number of militants killed. 2,960 mercenaries have arrived in Ukraine from this country, 1,497 of them have been eliminated. Georgia is also in the top three (1,042 arrived, 561 destroyed) and the United States (1,113 arrived, 491 destroyed)."
My personal intuition leads me to believe that these numbers should be at least increased ten-fold to be close to anything seen or explained anecdotally by frontline soldiers and other observers. There are many articles including this one, that claim that at many points during the SMO the dominant language of the Western side has been Polish and/or English including and especially during the doomed Kursk Offensive. This fact would indicate that there must be vastly more than ~3000 total Polish mercenaries in order to create this linguistic dominance effect. By official numbers this many men would constitute a tiny minority on Kiev's active roster not even worth mentioning like the forgotten Romanians at Stalingrad.
But regardless of their true numbers, in terms of infantry, Poland has been the number one supporter of the war against Russia for years now. But then, one day, all of a sudden, Zelensky's praising of certain Banderites is cause to call the whole thing off ? This seems odd. Perhaps this is a soft exit strategy via a new narrative, but more on that later.
Polish politicians are smarter than others in the EU, but blinded by Russophobia
Unlike the Anglo-Saxons who don't know and 'don't need to know' where a country is on a map in order to bomb it to liberate the local population, Polish politicians are much more aware of history especially that of Poland. In fact, just like in every former member of the USSR/Warsaw Pact many such politicians were looking for all sorts of historical reasons to justify hatred of the Russians. The partitioning of Poland is always blamed on Russia despite it being divided into three pieces. Two of the other dividers are in the EU and thus quietly never mentioned to the teenagers of Poland. The second divide of the nation at the dawn of WWII is often blamed on the USSR trying to conquer them, yet the fact that Moscow chose to restore Poland after the conflict is a very ineffective form of conquest when one sits down and thinks about it. Furthermore, who got all of those fine Polish commoners out of the German concentration camps?
Russian heroes Pozharsky and Minin drove out the Polish-Lithuanians during the 'Time of Troubles' but did not go to Poland to take revenge on normies. Unlike in Kiev, Moscow has no official heroes, whose heroism involved massacring normal everyday Poles in their homeland.
Forcing Poland down the path of Communism is something people are still angry about in Eastern Europe and beyond, but the Russians went down the exact same doomed road and paid heavily for switching systems too. The Russophobic propagandists of Warsaw ultimately came up empty, which is why the interpretation of the Volyn Massacre was a hot issue to drum up hatred for Russia for many years. This slaughter was truly horrific but it happened long ago in an isolated place being somewhat lost to history and thus it was easy to just blame the Russians for it on Wikipedia, X and Telegram channels. RT wrote the following on the dark historical event:
"Warsaw and Kiev may stand on the same side of today's geopolitical divide, but they remain separated by one of the darkest crimes of the twentieth century. Their dispute over the Volyn Massacre has intensified in recent months, turning historical memory into a diplomatic battlefield. This July 11 - marking both the 83rd anniversary of the 'Bloody Sunday' massacres and ten years since Poland declared the date a national day of remembrance for the victims of the Volyn Genocide - serves as a reminder that some wars do not end when the shooting stops....
...The incident that kicked off what would later be called the Volyn Massacre is considered to be a raid on the village of Paroslya on February 9, 1943. The militants did not waste bullets: Poles were hacked to pieces with axes. A number of villages were dealt with in a similar fashion. In March, the village of Lipniki was destroyed. Among the survivors was a one-and-a-half-year-old baby, who had been accidentally overlooked. The infant, whose grandfather had been stabbed with a bayonet, was found the next morning by chance, lying in the snow among the dead and dying. He would grow up to become the first Polish cosmonaut, Mirosław Hermaszewski."
Polish politicians will now and probably for the foreseeable future have an instinctual hatred of Moscow, but the majority of them were absolutely well aware that the Banderite legacy was and is strong in Kiev from the very beginning of its revival and that it is the real perpetrator of crimes against ethnic Poles. Zelensky showing support for certain 'heroes' in 2026 is no different than him showing support for them in 2022. They chose to turn a blind eye to all this until they actively decided to see it.
The return of the medals that should have never been issued
The following words come from Tomio Okamura on X and expertly describe what the spat between Kiev and Warsaw has developed into:
"After Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently awarded one of the combat units the honorary name"Heroes of the UPA"- that is, heroes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which is responsible for the massacres of up to hundreds of thousands of Poles, Jews, Czechs, and Ukrainians in Ukraine during World War II - and on Friday Polish President Karol Nawrocki stripped Zelenskyy of Poland's highest state decoration for this reason, an anti-Polish"storm"broke out in Ukraine over the weekend. Former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba stated that the Polish president"hates Ukrainians as a phenomenon."Radical Ukrainian nationalist and volunteer army commander Dmytro Yarosh allegedly called Polish politicians"sellout whores."There also appeared a claim by a Ukrainian journalist that after Zelenskyy was warned about the consequences of his step, he allegedly commented on the matter vulgarly:"F**k the Poles."Ukrainians are en masse sending their decorations back to Warsaw."
Again, it was the new generation of 'Heroes of the UPA' that marched and won at the Maidan in 2014 then carried out ethnic cleansings of Russians in the Donbass as part of the ATO. They used the exact same symbols, terminology and at times even uniforms. Almost all Polish politicians should have been aware of this, but then again geopolitically weaker nations are often forced to act in hypocritical ways at bayonet point and Poland is certainly no exception. This medal annulment scandal looks to be manufactured outrage by Warsaw but why?
Here are some potential explanations of what is going on:
- Most importantly, nothing has changed at the front of the SMO in terms of Polish participation. There has been no news that this scandal was used as an off-ramp yet. Although, there has been a move to deport Ukrainians from Poland, especially fighting age Ukrainian men, sending them back home to die against the Russians. Perhaps deportation is the name of the game. If there is anything the West loves, it is using Slavs as expendable meat shields and Poland would probably rather fill the ranks down south with outsiders than with their own.
- We actually are entering a Multipolar World. Perhaps Washington/London/Brussels are not willing or able to force more Polish citizens to die for their plantation masters, and thus this is a stalling tactic. After the massive retaliatory strikes in the summer of 2026 by the Kremlin it is possible that Warsaw can already feel where the wind is blowing and wants to at least freeze their participation in place as this thing winds down. How things will look in Eastern Europe in 10 years has become very unclear. In 2022 the EU was sure Russia would fall in months economically, but now, who knows what the future will look like?
- 3. There may be conspiracy theories that there is a secret deal over Ukrainian land between Warsaw and Moscow, but ultimately the Polish public has never been told that this is a war of expansion to create a Greater Poland. As it stands, Poland is filled with refugees, paying economic prices, losing thousands of its sons drones down south, all in order to... spite Russia or something ? Political will for the fight is sinking like the Titanic and perhaps Warsaw is legitimately tired of humoring the Banderites and this is not some form of political theatre but real beliefs being exposed out of frustration.
- 4. Having a political off-ramp is always a good thing, especially if your intelligence services are starting to confirm that Kiev is falling apart, the big swerve off the Zelensky highway is something Warsaw could want the ability to do at a moment's notice.
- 5. The Pro Wrestling factor is a potential reason for anything in politics. Throughout the whole war the West has been convinced that PR moves and 'fake it till you make it' informational warfare should bring down Moscow. Russia's greatest weakness is the shocking naiveté of its citizenry, and perhaps this is some fake drama to try to sucker the Russians into thinking 'it's over' thus, causing them to change some policies prematurely. Or it could be the old trick to make them think that Poland 'wants to be friends again'. Russia's desire to be friends with its enemies has led to catastrophic results and it sure is an exploitable weakness that works time-and-time again. This 'row' as the BBC likes to call it could be fake to achieve an informational objective for there should be zero surprise from Polish politicians as to whom they've been dealing with all these years.