By Constantin Radut
In recent weeks, the Warsaw press has launched a real campaign for what many geostrategists would see as a “Polish-Ukrainian union.” Propaganda in the region, whether anti-Russian or pro-Russian, looks closely at the evolution of relations between the two states, especially as Poland and Ukraine do not temper their belligerent language and do not expect a peaceful future in this part of Europe, which has become outbreak of hatred and division following the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation.
I did not write at all in our newspaper about the Russian-Ukrainian war. For the simple reason that we are attached to the ideas of collaboration and business, peace and security of nations.
However, the theatrical performance given in Kyiv more than a week ago by the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda, and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, cannot leave us indifferent.
Point 1.
Mr Zelensky told the Ukrainian parliament that his country would grant a “special regime” to the Polish minority in his country. This is due to the fact that the Warsaw Parliament has passed a law recognizing all refugees’ residence, work and social rights in Poland for the period during which they will remain in Poland. Apart from the right to vote.
Agreed. A gesture of friendship and brotherhood is rewarded with the same coin.
The question is why Mr. Zelensky does not “favor” other ethnic minorities in Ukraine. Like the Romanian one. Almost 500,000 Romanians live in Ukraine, in the former Romanian region of Bukovina, with its capital at Chernivtsi. The Romanian minority is not recognized by the Ukrainian state. Moreover, for over 10 years, Romanian language schools have been closed, and the unfriendly policy towards Romanians in Ukraine has always been strong.
However, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Romania received more than a million Ukrainian refugees on its territory. We hosted them, fed them, tried to improve their lives. My family provided a living space for a few days and all the comfort of a mother with two minor daughters. They then left for a Nordic country. But the Ukrainians who stayed in Romania and wanted to work even had priority over jobs, salaries, social and health insurance.
I mean, Mr Zelensky uses half measures. Especially since Romania, like Poland, has always attacked, through the voice of the country’s highest dignitaries, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. And no one in Romania is reluctant to criticize the massacres of the Russian army in Ukraine.
Point 2.
There were no political, territorial, internal or external disputes between Romania and Ukraine, an independent state, or the Soviet republic. Romania respects the status quo.
Unlike Romania, Polish-Ukrainian relations are full of warrior moments, hatred and controversy.
Here is just one example.
The Volhynia massacre reached its climax 79 years ago. The Polish and German media reported at the right time about “Bloody Sunday”, when Ukrainian nationalists allegedly killed many thousands of Polish civilians. In 2016, immediately after the PiS came to power, many Poles demanded that the Polish parliament label this as genocide. But the government was reluctant.
At the demonstration in Warsaw on July 7, 2016, Pastor Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski said: “July 11 is a holy date. This is the day when hundreds of UPAs, the Ukrainian insurgent army, backed by Ukrainian civilians, attacked 100 Polish villages. It was a Sunday because it was clear that the Poles would go to church there. People were killed in churches during the Holy Mass. ”
The anniversary of Bloody Sunday, as it is called in the Polish consciousness, cannot be forgotten.
And yet, here is one of the paradoxes of history. In May 2022, in Kyiv, the presidents of Poland and Ukraine embraced and kissed like two children.
Quid prodest?
