ANDRII KUTSYK AND KATERYNA KYRYCHENKO: You were 1 of the fewer diplomats who stayed in the country erstwhile the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine started on February 24th 2022. Was it your individual decision? Or was it the decision of the president and the Polish government?
BARTOSZ CICHOCKI: The Polish president Andrzej Duda visited Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on February 23rd 2022. Duda told Zelenskyy that Poland will stay with Ukraine side by side. For me, this meant that I had to be physically in Ukraine. I do not justice my colleagues who left, but an ambassador is sent to represent his country to the government of another country. If the government of Ukraine and the president of Ukraine remained in Kyiv, it was clear to me that I had to be in Kyiv as well. It was my individual decision. On the another hand, if I had said that I did not feel safe there and wanted to leave, I think Warsaw would have said, “Okay, go.” But this did not happen.
Do you remember your emotions after the invasion began? Was it fear? Was it anger? Or possibly something else?
I was frightened before the invasion, due to the fact that I did not realize how it would go. any were speculating there would be a limited invasion, any were saying it would be full-scale. That said, there was a certain deficiency of transparency, unpredictability of the situation. But erstwhile it all started, we were already prepared. We have been preparing for this since October 2021. We put in order the documents, the equipment, as well as food and water supplies. We had already planned evacuation routes and prepared vehicles, counted people. As 1 of the first steps, a week and a half before the invasion we sent our women and children distant to Poland. I mean, erstwhile the invasion started, I felt a kind of relief that it had started. The situation had yet become clear – we were moving into a crisis mode. And we acted in this situation step by step. At first, there were difficulties, due to the fact that we have been 20 in the embassy, and it rapidly became evident that we would not last long taking into account our limited supplies. All shops closed down, rockets and bombs started flying. Within a week, we sent most of our people distant from Kyiv in respective convoys. And then there were only 3 of us in the embassy in Kyiv, and even then, we were reasoning about what we had to do, not about how and erstwhile it would end, due to the fact that that would have driven us crazy. We couldn’t think about whether we would be killed or not then. We had no control over that. We could only control whether we had water, fuel, a car, a phone, the Internet.
You were 1 of the first people to visit Bucha and see the war crimes committed by the Russians. Do you think that Polish society knows adequate about the atrocities committed by the Russians in Ukraine and whether the Polish side is cooperating with the Ukrainian side in the context of investigating these crimes and establishing a tribunal for the military and political leadership of Russia?
I first went to Bucha erstwhile there were already no Russians in the Kyiv region. The president of Poland Andrzej Duda arrived, then the Marshal of the legislature arrived. We went with president Duda to Borodianka, and with the Marshal of the legislature to Bucha. I saw these mass graves, these destroyed buildings. Poles have no uncertainty that Russians are committing grave atrocities and war crimes. There is simply a Russian state policy of changing the DNA of the Ukrainian nation. Children are being deported, women are being raped, and even soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are being castrated. I don’t think anyone in Poland questions this. But the investigation of these crimes requires very professional prosecutorial work. My colleague, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine Andrii Kostin, is cooperating on this issue with the Polish Ministers of Justice. War in itself is bad, even catastrophic. But even in war, 1 can either someway inactive respect principles of warfare, or 1 can wage war without any respect for the rules. Residents of the occupied territories besides have their rights, yet Russia is waging war without respecting any rights, any principles. And there must be accountability for this.
Poland cooperates with Ukraine and helps Ukraine in investigating war crimes and bringing Russia to justice. Is this a question of Poland’s function in the establishment of Ukraine’s independence? Or is it more about Poland’s commitment to promoting global justice and countering global crimes?
Both. Ukraine is any kind of a romanticist dream for Poland. For us, the Commonwealth we all lived in together is to any degree the lost “Atlantis”. And I think there is any kind of legend that everything utilized to be good erstwhile Poland and Ukraine were together, and now it is bad. For example, you see in Poland, even though things are terrible in Gaza, there are no specified emotions attached compared to what is happening in Ukraine, due to the fact that Gaza is far away, and Ukraine is close. We realize that if we forgive the Russians for their crimes and set a precedent, they may repeat akin crimes against Poles. During the Second planet War, our children were deported to the 3rd Reich, and we besides experienced Russification, during which terrible things happened. Poles were forced to decision to what is now Central Asia. Thus, this is not a theoretical question. We full realize what will happen if Ukraine fails to preserve itself and a war is started against Poland. So this position is both pragmatic and moral.
How do you see future relations between Ukraine and Poland in the context of regional security? After all, late in Ukraine there have been quite a few vibrant discussions about Poland’s decision not to shoot down Russian drones over the territory of both western Ukraine and east Poland…
I realize that our Ukrainian colleagues are under large intellectual pressure, as they have been fighting for their lives for 3 years. But it is incorrect to make a image that shooting down drones in Ukraine’s airspace is Poland’s responsibility, or that, for example, Lviv is being destroyed due to Poland not shooting down missiles or drones over western Ukraine. I realize that Ukraine’s friends and partners could do more, but for any reason they don’t. And it’s absolutely not due to the fact that they have ceased to support Ukraine. There might have been any decision-making mistakes and we request to talk about it, alternatively than publically accuse Poland of deciding not to shoot down Russian targets. After all, how are we expected to do this – technically? It is not Poland that makes this decision unilaterally. This decision should be made at the NATO level. If we decide to shoot down Russian targets in Ukrainian airspace on our own, military capabilities located in Poland will become a legitimate mark for Russia.
Will it aid Ukraine? I don’t think so. We are already providing unprecedented support to a non-NATO state, a non-member of the European Union. Never always before have NATO states transferred as much hi-tech equipment and information intelligence to each another as they have been transferring to Ukraine. So publically accusing Poland of not helping Ukraine adequate does not work in Ukraine’s favour. And bringing this up into the public space, reasoning that we can someway be intimidated, is very naïve. erstwhile Germany is saying they will not hand over anything at all, erstwhile the United States is accusing president Zelenskyy of interfering in their election campaign, attacking the Poles at the same time… seems to be very short-sighted to me.
How do you estimation the position of current Polish-Ukrainian relations?
I believe that, unfortunately, we are presently in a hard moment. And it didn’t even start with the protests of farmers and truck drivers. I think it started erstwhile a Ukrainian anti-aircraft rocket killed 2 Polish citizens, and we were publically told that it was a Russian missile, but the Poles were afraid to admit it based on the US instructions. It was insulting. It was disrespectful to our president and our prime minister. And from that minute on, your assurance in us, our assurance in you began to worsen at the highest level. On the Polish side, we besides made a mistake erstwhile we were asked about Solidarity Lanes (The “Solidarity Lanes” initiative refers to alternate transport routes set up by the European Union in consequence to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, aiming to aid Ukraine export its agricultural products, peculiarly grain, amid the blockade of Black Sea ports. This initiative has been peculiarly crucial in the context of Ukraine-Poland relations, as Poland has become a key transit country for Ukrainian goods – ed.). We opened our border without considering the reaction of the society. Polish society did not become anti-Ukrainian, but people felt the consequences of the Ukrainian grain sold massively on the Polish marketplace – alternatively of being transited. I am certain that Ukrainian grain was not the main thing that caused the crisis. Here we should add the European Union’s climate policy, which is very unsuccessful in the sense it makes agricultural production much more expensive. The global grain marketplace is flood with inexpensive Russian, Brazilian and another grain, which pushes the prices down. As a consequence farmers all over the EU started to protest. But many in Kyiv pictured the situation like only the Polish farmers were blocking the Ukrainian grain.
The fastest thing 1 can do erstwhile in a catastrophic situation, erstwhile 1 has no money for their household due to not being able to sell, is to block the border with Ukraine. The Germans blocked their minister. The Spanish blocked grain from Morocco. Kyiv suggested that if only our government wished to, the border would be unblocked. Like they didn’t realize that Poland is simply a large country, and if we started to disperse the farmers from the border, they would end up blocking Rzeszow airport or Okęcie. Would this have made things better for Ukraine? I don’t think so. We are not a dictatorship and those protests were completely legal, whatever we think of them.
But on the another hand, it is actual that more could have been done. I remember Jadwiga Emilewicz, who was at the time the Morawiecki government’s Plenipotentiary for Polish-Ukrainian improvement Cooperation, went to these farmers and drivers and talked to them. There were certain agreements reached that they would leave the border if we started doing something in the EU, if we guaranteed that the Ukrainian grain will transit through Poland and will not be sold in Poland. But then, unfortunately, large politics started in Poland – the elections. And everyone started counting votes. And it is clear that in an agrarian country like Poland, a farmer is simply a sacred cow, and no 1 will contact them. That said, moods of toxicity and distrust were growing. The president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy besides has the right to believe that any promises were not kept. After all, it was decided to impose an embargo within hours. This should not have happened due to the fact that no 1 talked to Ukrainians about it beforehand. I’m not saying that this is simply a black and white situation, that we did everything right, and president Zelenskyy is to be blamed for everything – absolutely not. president Zelenskyy felt that he was treated with disrespect, that something was promised to him and was not fulfilled.
It besides seems to me that the fresh government in Poland is besides focused on interior political affairs. Again, we had parliamentary elections, then local government elections, then elections to the European Parliament, and now we will have presidential elections. Thus, unfortunately, politicians are focused on keeping or gaining power and, unfortunately, not focused adequate on the war in Ukraine. And this is simply a problem. It’s hard to find a politician in Poland who will be ready to take the hazard and offer something constructive with respect to Ukraine. Somehow, this subject has become toxic. I am certain that the situation is the same on the Ukrainian side. Now we request to find any kind of constructive joint project. A good example of specified an initiative is Prime Minister Tusk’s proposal that Poland aid rebuild the destroyed buildings in Lviv. Let’s see if the Mayor of Lviv Andrii Sadovyi and his colleagues will let us to rebuild something and if there are Polish companies that will agree to work under the hazard of Russian rocket attacks.
Yet, I wouldn’t say that current Polish-Ukrainian relations are in a critical state, due to the fact that Poland inactive supports Ukraine, almost all aid goes through Poland, and Poland supports Ukraine on the EU and NATO platforms. If our relations were in crisis, everything would have worked otherwise.
An crucial aspect that we request to talk about is historical memory. How, when, and if at all can the complex issues of Polish-Ukrainian historical memory, in peculiar the Volhynia massacre, be resolved? Do you think the problem is solely of a political nature or is there more to it?
It surely can be resolved. I think it is frequently being mistakenly called a historical problem [as in being crucial today]. I am convinced that it is not a historical problem at all, due to the fact that what happened 80 years ago has already happened, and neither the president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy nor the Minister of abroad Affairs of Ukraine Andrii Sybiha are liable for it. Similarly, we are not liable for those Poles who have killed Ukrainians in Sahryń or Pawłokoma. It happened, our grandfathers did it. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) was not even a typical of the state of Ukraine at that time. This is not a question for current Ukraine to address. Yet, if current Ukraine does not give approval for exhumations, if we were de facto banned from screening the movie Volhynia back in the days of the erstwhile president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, if the Institute of National Memory of Ukraine violates bilateral commitments… This is evidently a nuance, but this subject is personally very close to me. A fewer years ago a bilateral forum of historians has been working on different stages of our relations and it was agreed then to print the positions the participants presented: what Polish historians consider appropriate and what Ukrainian historians consider appropriate. We did that. Mr. Viatrovych said he had no money for publication or else, so it was not done. So how can we proceed working in this way?
We had previously agreed that if there were any controversial things, we would put them on the forum and discuss them together. Then, it turns out that around September and October in 2017, Mr. Sheremeta, the Secretary of the Ukrainian State Interministerial Commission on Memoralization of Victims of War and Political Repressions, so to say, a civilian servant, opened a quasi-cemetery in Veretskyi Pass for the Carpathian Sich POW-s who, as the memorial virtually says, were shot by the Poles on March 18th 1939 – six 100 people in 1 day. This implies that there was any kind of war crime that no 1 told us about. They say that the Hungarians arrested 500 or 600 Ukrainians and allegedly handed them over to a Polish patrol, and that this patrol killed them all. Mr. Sheremeta did not discover the bodies. What was discovered was the testimonies of 1 individual who is not the most trustworthy. And later on, erstwhile the cemetery is built, the vice prime minister at the time Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze is invited to the opening, and the honour defender of the Armed Forces of Ukraine opens the cemetery with the national anthem. This is, of course, up to Ukraine to do. But what can we talk about then, what forum of historians?
Say, any imaginary Mr. Petro somewhere in Chernivtsi believes that the Poles were killing people and the UPA were not, then this is his private matter. In Poland, there are besides rather a fewer crazy people who believe that all Ukrainians are Banderites. But this is the individual opinion of an imaginary Mr. Piotr from Wrocław. But on the state level, public policy should be more responsible. There should be work for ensuring that graves are not destroyed or that they are reconstructed – not only UPA soldiers’ graves. Clearly, there are problematic situations on our part as well, due to gaps in our legislation. For example, how to treat a grave with the body of a UPA soldier? Our government does not stipulate that this is simply a military grave. This is simply a nuance though that could have been easy fixed by legislators.
Another issue is that graves and memorials are treated in the same way by the Institute of National Memory of Ukraine (by Mr. Viatrovych at the time, and now Mr. Drobovych). Take the scandal with the triumph monument in Hruszowice, for example. It was not actually a grave, not 1 UPA associate was buried there. It was a memorial to 5 or six “kurinis” (companies – ed.) of the UPA – glorification, so to say. According to Polish law, local administrations are liable for specified memorials. The government had addressed the head of the local administration requesting not to do anything and to let Ukraine and Poland to work on resolving the issue together. However, residents of the hromada had been demanding that the local administration dismantle it for years. We asked Ukrainian colleagues to come do investigation to guarantee there were graves of UPA soldiers there as they claimed and which would transfer the jurisdiction over the then grave – not a monument anymore. We were welcoming specified research, Ukrainians did not seem to want to conduct it. Eventually, the head of the local administration dismantled the monument and the “avalanche” started.
All this can be resolved. But I am certain any statements by Mr. Drobovych do not help. Take his fresh interview to Mr. Bobołowicz. It is simply a bit of a akin situation as with Poland not shooting down drones over Lviv, erstwhile the communicative is reversed to Poland allegedly vandalizing and ruining everything, yet imposing certain expectations on Ukrainians. In this situation, we do request brave politicians. specified as Ruslan Stefanchuk, for example, who came to the anniversary of the Volhynia massacre and bowed in front of the cross in Warsaw commemorating victims of the massacre, which says “genocide” on it. It is an highly hard thing to do. I realize that it was a immense challenge for him. What will he say later at home? But he did it anyway. possibly we request a small more people like Ruslan Stefanchuk.
There are presently around 20 exhumation requests awaiting Ukraine’s response. Obviously, the war is ongoing and the procedures are hard to do now as they require the presence of both Ukrainian and Polish archaeologists at the site. I am besides certain that Poland besides needs to do more systematic work from our side, alternatively than to make loud statements – i.e. that we will not let Ukraine into the EU “with Bandera”. This creates a certain pretext that we would blackmail Ukraine, which will not be accepted by our colleagues in the European Union. I uncertainty the negotiating mandate within the accession process includes Bandera. And what precisely 1 means by Bandera? specified statements are vague and were dropped like a atomic bomb. We request to deal with this subject consistently, not depending on a political message or on the date of the anniversary of the massacre in July. This is our common cause, due to the fact that if we put it off, it will be bad for both Ukraine and Poland.
It is evident to me that we are not able to reverse the process of the UPA’s glorification in Ukraine. According to Ukrainian law, it is up to local administrations to put up monuments to Bandera, Shukhevych, etc. For Poles, specified local decisions resonate nationally. Yet, we have no influence on this. In Ukraine, as in Poland, monuments are in the competency of local administrations, whereas the decisions on graves are centralized.
Unfortunately, it seems more possible now to gain popularity in both Poland and Ukraine by criticizing Ukrainians in Poland and Poles in Ukraine respectively. Probably, we should wait for this minute to pass. For example, I do not realize the reason for the ban on the movie Volhynia in Ukraine. This is not an anti-Ukrainian film. It is simply a movie about the fact that under certain conditions any individual can become not even an animal, but any kind of Satan. And there are both bad and good examples of both Ukrainians and Poles in the film. It would be large to let the screening of this movie in Ukraine, accompanied by a discussion allowing historians or youth to discuss it. It seems to me that from the Ukrainian side, the ban on the screening of the movie Volhynia was a bad mistake. What is besides needed is to increase opportunities for publications, conferences and another technological work. The Russian aggression has fundamentally created the conditions for Ukrainians and Poles to interact more, become closer and we should take advantage of it. Of course, it would have been better without the war. erstwhile I went to visit cemeteries in Ukraine on the anniversary of the Volhynia massacre, I met with community leaders. We talked about this issue openly. Everyone remembers what had happened and who did what. And no 1 is arrogant of it. Locally, people want to decision forward and have nothing against the Polish cross being put up. There would not have been so many problems with this topic, if politicians and officials from both countries were not making various provocative statements.
Summing up, I would say these are not historical problems but alternatively problems of the current legal and administrative decisions regarding the past.
Bartosz Cichocki is a Polish political scientist and historian, between 2019 and 2023 serving as the Polish ambassador to Ukraine.
Andrii Kutsyk is simply a investigation Fellow at the Institute of Political Sciences University of Gdańsk and a visiting investigator in UMCS.
Kateryna Kyrychenko is simply a Legal Officer and Ukraine Program manager at the pro bono law firm Public global Law and Policy Group (PILPG) and is presently pursuing a PhD in global Law at the National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”.
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