The massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, were carried out in German-occupied Poland by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or the UPA, with the support of parts of the local Ukrainian population against the Polish minority in Volhynia, Eastern Galicia, parts of Polesia and Lublin region from 1943 to 1945.
The peak of the massacres took place in July and August 1943. Most of the victims were women and children. Many of the Polish victims regardless of age or gender were tortured before being killed; some of the methods included rape, dismemberment or immolation, among others. The UPA's actions resulted in between 50,000 and 100,000 deaths.

According to Timothy Snyder, the ethnic cleansing was a Ukrainian attempt to prevent the post-war Polish state from asserting its sovereignty over Ukrainian-majority areas that had been part of the prewar Polish state.[9] Henryk Komanski and Szczepan Siekierka write that the killings were directly linked to the policies of Stepan Bandera's faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) and its military arm, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, whose goal as specified at the Second Conference of the OUN-B on 17–23 February 1943 (March 1943 in some sources) was to purge all non-Ukrainians from the future Ukrainian state. The massacres led to a wider conflict between Polish and Ukrainian forces in the German-occupied territories, with the Polish Home Army in Volhynia responding to the Ukrainian attacks, on a much smaller scale.

In 2008, the massacres which were committed by the Ukrainian nationalists against the Poles in Volhynia and Galicia were described by Poland's Institute of National Remembrance as bearing the distinct characteristics of a genocide, and on 22 July 2016, the Parliament of Poland passed a resolution recognizing the massacres as genocide. This classification is disputed by Ukraine and some non-Polish historians. According to a 2016 article in Slavic Review, there is a "scholarly consensus that this was a case of ethnic cleansing as opposed to genocide".[18] Although Polish families, as the most numerous ethnic minority and in some areas majority, where the main target of the killings, victims also included Jews, Russians, Czechs, Georgians, and any Ukrainians who were part of Polish families or opposed the UPA and sabotaged the genocide by hiding Polish escapees.

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olish authorities will seek to have Ukraine acknowledge the truth about the crimes of the OUN-UPA (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists - Ukrainian Insurgent Army, outlawed in Russia), and create an option for Polish citizens to pray on the graves of the fallen compatriots, Polish President Andrzej Duda said Monday, speaking on the Day of Remembrance of victims of the genocide, carried out by Ukrainian nationalists against the Poles 79 years ago.

"What do we want? We want truth. We want the graves. We want to pray on the graves of our relatives and close ones."

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Posted by basionok

Member since May 2022

403 posts

Posted on 7/12/22 at 11:59 am to basionok

Poland is seeking to conceal its expansion to Western Ukraine and is taking nervously the leak of its plans of dismembering Ukraine, director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service Sergey Naryshkin said on Tuesday.

"Information coming to the Service indicates a nervous reaction of Poland’s leadership to the fact that its plans of dismembering Ukraine have come in the public eye," the Service’s press bureau quoted him as saying.

In his words, Warsaw obviously hoped that amid the tough geopolitical standoff neither Kiev nor Washington no Moscow would notice its preparations for seizing Ukrainian territories. "Poland hoped that when the conflict in Ukraine reaches a phase of diplomatic settlement, the sides will have to recognize ‘Poland’s expansion’ as an accomplished fact. Now, following the leak of sensible information the Polish leadership has to quiet concerns of its NATO and EU ‘friends,’" Naryshkin said.

Now, Warsaw hopes to correct the situation by means of wide propaganda. Think tanks and the mass media controlled by the government have been instructed to stage a media campaign to disguise Poland’s actions toward strengthening its positions in Ukraine and refute "rumors." According to the information of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, it is planned to focus on creating an image of "collective participation" of all Ukraine’s neighbors in Kiev’s affairs. For these ends, Warsaw plans to cooperate more closely on the Ukrainian problem with Hungary and Romania to hide behind them in order to implement its plans.

"Warsaw seems not to see that its "secret" ambitions and complexes have been a source of taunting and irritation for its ‘patrons’ for years. By the way, the unclassified documents of the Foreign Intelligence Service have an articulate characteristic given by British Foreign Secretary John Simon back in 1935, who said that the Polish government’s childish policy of prestige was hindering peacebuilding in Europe and suited neither its political, nor financial, nor military position," the press bureau added.

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