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Hanna PetrivnaUPAUPA PSUPA EU INRINR PSUPA EU UPA UPA Your browser does not support the element., now 91, was a schoolgirl when she saw lorries packed with dozens of Poles from nearby villages pull up near her home in Vishnevets. Ukrainian Insurgent Army () fighters herded them into the basement of a church, “threw some hay inside and burned them alive.” Hannah recalls the Christmas carols she learned from her Polish friends, and sings one.Up to 100,000 ethnic Poles died at the hands of the and Ukrainian villagers across Volhynia and Galicia, in what is now western Ukraine, in 1943, in a cycle of genocidal violence that engulfed the region in the second world war. Other mass graves include those of Volhynia’s Jews, murdered wholesale by the Nazis and their local accomplices, and of Ukrainians executed by Soviet agents. They scar the region to this day. Some have been discovered; many have not.As today’s war rages in Ukraine’s east, a row over the graves is tearing at the country’s relations with Poland, one of its key allies in Europe. Poland has long accused Ukraine of playing down the scale of the massacres, impeding the search for victims, and so denying them a proper burial. Ukraine says the killings were part of a wider conflict going back to the 1920s, with death and displacement on both sides.A potential breakthrough came on November 24th, when the Polish and Ukrainian foreign ministers said there would be “no obstacles” to exhumations in Volhynia and next-door areas. Ukraine says the digging can begin in the spring. But many Poles doubt such assurances. Politicians of all stripes are upping the stakes. In December the far-right Law and Justice (i), Poland’s main opposition party, asked parliament to consider making the “glorification” of and Stepan Bandera, the group’s chief ideologue, a crime punishable by up to three years in prison. Poland’s defence minister, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, had caused an even bigger stir in October, warning that Poland would block Ukraine from joining the unless the exhumations took place. Opinion polls suggest most Poles agree.Historians from each country have locked horns. Konrad Nawrocki, head of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance (), a body set up to investigate Nazi and Soviet war crimes, has accused Ukraine of acting in bad faith. He says Polish teams could begin exhumations “in 24 hours” and champions the idea of a museum to honour the victims in Volhynia. “For various forces in Poland the past has become a tool for obtaining certain political dividends,” says Volodymyr Tylishchak, deputy head of Ukraine’s own . Others fear the issue may be exploited ahead of Poland’s presidential race this spring. Mr Nawrocki, backed byi, is a candidate.The row began in 2017, when Ukraine blocked exhumations in response to vandalism against monuments to soldiers killed by the Russians in Poland. The issue disappeared from the headlines once Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine in 2022. Poland raised its support for Ukraine, called for a path to membership, and became the West’s main hub for military aid to Ukraine. Nearly a million Ukrainian refugees made Poland their home. In the face of a common enemy, Russia, the legacy of the massacres, of the reprisals by Polish resistance fighters who killed thousands of Ukrainians, and of the later deportations of some 150,000 Ukrainians by Poland’s communist regime faded away.Or so it seemed. The dispute simmered again in 2023 and boiled over last September, after Dmytro Kuleba, then Ukraine’s foreign minister, fumbled a question about Volhynia at a conference in Poland. An outcry ensued; Polish politicians and historians accused him of refusing to confront past Ukrainian wrongs. Ukrainians do not know enough about Volhynia, admits Mr Tylishchak, but he says Poles need to appreciate Ukrainian suffering too.The controversy, along with Poland’s earlier decision to ban grain imports from Ukraine, spells the end of the honeymoon between the two countries. The share of Poles who back new military aid to Ukraine has dropped from 87% as the war began to 63% in October. Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, has since suggested he wants no part of a plan floated by France’s Emmanuel Macron to send peacekeepers to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire with Russia. The share of Ukrainians who have a positive view of Poles has halved, to 41%, in only two years.Versions of history compete. Poles see the as war criminals seeking an independent Ukraine through ethnic cleansing, whereas many Ukrainians see them as a symbol of resistance to Soviet rule and Russian aggression, especially since the full-scale invasion in 2022. According to one survey, the share of Ukrainians who view Bandera favourably reached 74% in 2022, up from only 22% ten years earlier.Russia has pounced on the row, hoping to drive a wedge between the two countries. To whip up anger in Ukraine, Russian social media are airing old photos of damaged monuments in Poland. Officials in Warsaw suspect Russian involvement in some of the attacks on the monuments. Ukrainian and Polish historians and diplomats say the way forward for both their countries is to focus on the exhumations and set aside history. “What we agree on, each time we meet,” says Piotr Lukasiewicz, the Polish ambassador to Ukraine, “is that Russia wins whenever we argue”.
