Polish leader pledges to use EU presidency to accelerate Ukraine’s membership application

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk pledged Wednesday to use his country’s presidency of the European Union to advance Ukraine’s bid for membership, as both sides have reported progress in recent days on a major irritant in their relations.

“We will break the deadlock we find ourselves in on this issue,” Tusk told reporters in Warsaw, alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “We will speed up the membership process.”

Poland now holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, the 27-member bloc that Ukraine aspires to join, and Warsaw will have the influence to put the issue at the top of the agenda for the next half year.

Zelensky was in Poland on Wednesday after the two countries reached an agreement under which Ukraine will allow the exhumation of some Polish victims of massacres carried out by Ukrainian nationalists during World War II, a source of long-standing tensions.

Zelensky’s visit came just days after Tusk announced progress in starting exhumations.

Although Poland has been one of Ukraine’s strongest supporters since Russia’s full-scale invasion almost three years ago, the issue of Polish victims lying in mass graves in the Ukrainian region of Volhynia, eight decades after their brutal assassination, leaves lingering bitterness among the citizens. many Poles.

Tusk, in power for more than a year, faces domestic pressure to show progress on an issue that continues to be important to many people in Poland. This is all the more important as his party’s candidate for next May’s presidential election will face a major challenge from a nationalist opposition candidate.

Alongside Zelensky, Tusk said the two sides “find a common language and methods of action on the issue of the Volhynian crime and on sensitive issues of our history.”

“We will help Ukraine, but we will also look after our national interests, which is a matter of course for both sides,” Tusk said.

Zelensky noted that culture ministries were already working on the details.

“I believe we must move forward together with Poland. We are neighbors and Russia is the main threat. This threat exists today, it will exist tomorrow and we must do everything to strengthen our alliance.”

A pro-European centrist, Tusk has for some time strived to embrace an inclusive form of patriotism – part of an effort to prevent nationalist conservatives from presenting themselves as the main defenders of Poland’s interests.

Western Ukraine was once under Polish rule, with Ukrainians largely subject to a Polish landowning class.

Resentments erupted into ethnic bloodshed during World War II, when the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, a nationalist military formation, massacred tens of thousands of Poles in the Nazi-occupied Polish regions of Volhynia and Eastern Galicia in 1943-44.

Entire villages were burned and their residents killed by nationalists and their supporters seeking to establish an independent Ukrainian state.

Thousands of Ukrainians were killed in retaliation.

In 2016, Poland called the massacres a genocide, leading Ukraine to block the exhumations. In recent years, Poland has asked Ukraine to let Polish authorities exhume the victims in order to give them proper burials.

The issue is sensitive for Ukraine. Some Ukrainian nationalists from World War II are considered national heroes today because of their fight for Ukraine’s statehood.

A non-governmental organization, the Freedom and Democracy Foundation, announced Monday that it would begin work to exhume the victims in Ukraine in April.

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Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv contributed to this report.