Kyiv, Ukraine – Ukraine’s president, prime minister, parliament speaker, top ministers and generals stood solemnly at a military cemetery outside Kyiv on May 22 as servicemen carried the coffins of Andriy Melnyk and his wife Sofiya past them.The ceremony was about “respect for Ukrainian heroes”, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said about Melnyk, a leader of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) that sought to create an independent Ukraine and who died in West Germany in 1964.Four days after the reburial – the Melnyks’ ashes had been exhumed from Luxembourg – Zelenskyy named an elite military unit after “the heroes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army,” a nationalist, paramilitary force mostly known by its Ukrainian acronym, the UPA.It stemmed from the OUN, fought in World War II and for years resisted the Sovietisation and Russification of western Ukrainian regions that used to belong to Poland.Zelenskyy’s steps prompted a rebuttal from Polish President Karol Nawrocki that grew into a diplomatic spat with no end in sight.Since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022, Poland has been Kyiv’s logistical backbone, arms and aid supplier and shelter for millions of refugees.On June 19, Nawrocki stripped Zelenskyy of Poland’s highest state honour, the Order of the White Eagle, because the UPA “remains above all a formation responsible for cruel crimes against” Poles during World War II, Nawrocki said on social media.In response …
