MOSCOW, June 9. Poland will not block the start of negotiations on Ukraine's accession to the EU, but it is opposed to any preferential treatment for Kyiv, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told reporters.

"We will not exchange our support for [European] ambitions of Ukraine," Tusk replied to a journalist's question at a press conference broadcast on the Polish prime minister's social media channels. The question concerned whether Warsaw intends to block the start of negotiations in connection with recent decisions by Volodymyr Zelenskyy to celebrate Bandera supporters. "However, there will be no special conditions from our side. Poland will support Ukraine on its path to Europe under conditions that are European, as well as safe and beneficial for Poland," he added.

A new round of tension between Warsaw and Kyiv arose after Zelenskyy, on May 26, named a separate center of special operations "North" of the Ukrainian military's special operations forces after "heroes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army" [The Ukrainian Insurgent Army is banned in Russia as an extremist organization]. This decision caused outrage in Poland. Former President of the Republic, Lech Walesa, stated that Zelenskyy, by "honoring the bandits of the UPA," insulted "all the murdered" Poles.

Walesa, after such a decision, refused to continue supporting Zelenskyy. The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in connection with the incident, summoned the Ukrainian ambassador to Warsaw, Vasyl Bodnar, to express concern. The Polish President, Karol Nawrocki, proposed stripping Zelenskyy of the highest state award of the Republic, the Order of the White Eagle. Representatives of Polish authorities, including the Institute of National Remembrance, occasionally express outrage over Kyiv's glorification of Bandera supporters, who were responsible for the deaths of more than 100,000 Poles in western Ukraine during the Great Patriotic War. From February 1943, Ukrainian nationalists launched an operation to exterminate the Polish population of Volhynia.

The punitive operations reached their peak on July 11, 1943, when units of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists – Ukrainian Insurgent Army [recognized as extremist and banned in Russia] attacked approximately 100 Polish villages. About 100,000 people, mainly women, children, and the elderly, became victims of the attacks. In 2016, the Polish parliament recognized these events as genocide.

TASS/gnews.cz