Polish Foreign Ministry ‘astonished’ at ‘genocide’ claim by Ukrainian MP

The draft resolution has been submitted by unaffiliated Ukrainian MP Oleh Musiy.

The move comes after the Polish parliament last month adopted a resolution declaring a National Day of Remembrance of Victims of Genocide perpetrated by Ukrainian nationalists against Poles during World War II.

Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Rafał Sobczak told the PAP news agency: "We have noted the registration in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada [parliament] on 3 August of a draft resolution whose title astonishes us."

The full title of the resolution submitted by Musiy is "Draft resolution on the commemoration of the victims of the genocide committed by the Polish state against Ukrainians in 1919-1951".

The proposed resolution calls on the Ukrainian parliament to decree 24 March a "Day of remembrance of Ukrainians - victims of genocide committed by the Polish state in 1919-1951."

The document, however, also stresses that history should not impact contemporary Ukrainian-Polish relations.

Sobczak noted that the draft resolution was the initiative of a single Ukrainian MP.

Last month, the Polish parliament adopted a resolution declaring 11 July a National Day of Remembrance of Victims of Genocide by Ukrainian nationalists against Poles during World War II.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko at the time voiced regret at the resolution by Polish MPs, which refers to the Volhynia Massacre, a black page in Polish-Ukrainian relations.

Some 100,000 ethnic Poles in total were slaughtered in the 1940s by Ukrainian forces, according to some estimates.

On 11 July 1943, the day of the worst bloodshed, Ukrainian nationalists attacked 100 villages largely inhabited by Poles in what was then Nazi-occupied eastern Poland and is now western Ukraine.

The massacres were part of an operation carried out by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, whose plan was to have a sovereign and nationally homogenous Ukraine after the war. (pk)

Source: PAP