Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has announced plans to build a national memorial in Warsaw dedicated to the victims of what he described as a "genocide committed by Ukrainian nationalists against Poles and Polish citizens of other nationalities" during World War Two. The announcement came on the 83rd anniversary of the beginning of the massacres in Volhynia — a region in what is now northwestern Ukraine — in which estimates suggest between 50,000 and 100,000 ethnic Poles were killed by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, known by its Ukrainian acronym UPA, between 1943 and 1945. The planned memorial will take the form of a commemorative wall bearing the names of all identified victims, alongside an eternal flame.
Tusk, speaking in a video address on social media, framed the memorial as a matter of historical obligation. "Truth is our duty toward the victims, but also a way to overcome a painful past for the sake of a better future," he said, while also cautioning that history must not be used to stoke new hostility. He urged Ukraine to "embrace this truth" as a condition for its aspiration to join the European Union. Polish President Karol Nawrocki, ordinarily a political rival of Tusk, echoed the same message at a separate commemoration near the Ukrainian border, arguing that the UPA's later resistance against Soviet rule does not justify or excuse the killings of Polish civilians.
The events in Volhynia remain a deep source of tension between Poland and Ukraine, two neighbouring countries whose relationship has otherwise grown significantly closer since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In Ukraine, the UPA is viewed by many as a symbol of the national independence struggle — fighters who resisted both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. That reverence is a persistent irritant in bilateral relations. Last month, diplomatic tensions escalated sharply after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky granted an honorary title of "Heroes of the UPA" to a Ukrainian military unit. In response, Nawrocki revoked the White Eagle — Poland's highest state honour — that Zelensky had received in 2023. Three former Ukrainian presidents subsequently returned their own White Eagle awards to Poland in solidarity with Zelensky.
In his own address on Saturday, Zelensky acknowledged the commemorations and noted that Ukrainian and Polish state representatives had taken part in joint prayers in both countries. "Ukraine is doing its part to honestly establish the facts about those killed in those years," he said, before stressing that both nations now face a shared existential threat. "That threat is called Russia," the Ukrainian president added. Up to 10,000 Ukrainian civilians are also estimated to have died in the violence of that period, a dimension that further complicates any straightforward historical reckoning.
The memorial announcement signals an attempt by Warsaw to address long-standing domestic pressure to formally recognise the Volhynia killings, while Tusk's careful language — warning that "the answer to nationalism cannot be more nationalism" — reflects the delicate balance Poland must strike between historical accountability and maintaining solidarity with Ukraine during an ongoing war.