Poland can make Ukraine's accession to the EU contingent on the resolution of the Volyn massacre as joining the bloc is not a matter of the country's survival, a Polish minister said in a media interview published on Oct. 15.
Speaking to the Interia outlet, Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz stressed that Warsaw continues supporting Kyiv through military and humanitarian aid regardless of historical issues.
Kosiniak-Kamysz said in June that Ukraine would not enter the EU without resolving the Volyn massacre, a tragic episode in Polish-Ukrainian history in 1943 when members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) massacred tens of thousands of Poles in Nazi-occupied Volyn, a region that used to be part of Poland and is now part of Ukraine. Thousands of Ukrainians were killed in retaliation.
"Joining the EU is not an existential matter for Ukraine; it is an opportunity for development, higher GDP growth," Kosiniak-Kamysz told Interia.
"Together with the conditions set by the EU, we can put forward our ethical and historical conditions regarding Volyn."
Ukraine launched membership talks with the EU earlier this year, but the final decision will require consensus among all 27 members.
The matter of the Volyn massacre was raised again by Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski last month, reportedly leading to a tense exchange with President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Despite several attempts at reconciliation between modern-day Poland and Ukraine, the remaining tensions relate to Warsaw's request for the exhumation of massacred Poles buried in modern-day Ukraine.
Ukraine blocked the exhumation in 2017 after Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) memorials in Poland were vandalized.
In early October, the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance promised to begin searches and exhumations next year.
The matter has also sparked tensions inside the Polish leadership. President Andrzej Duda said that blocking Ukraine's EU accession is in line with "Vladimir Putin's policy."
Duda made the comment even though objections to Ukraine's entry over the Volyn issue were also raised by the previous conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government, which was allied with the president.
"This may come as a surprise, but this government is taking the issue of exhumation of the Volyn massacre victims and their commemoration much more seriously than the previous government," Kosiniak-Kamysz claimed in the interview.
Dinara Khalilova
(Updated: )
