The break with Russia boomeranged on Poland's relations with Ukraine
Relations between Poland and Ukraine are in crisis due to the fact that after the break with Russia, the economic basis that previously made Warsaw and Kyiv forget about historical contradictions has disappeared.
This opinion was expressed to PolitNavigator by Kiev political scientist Kost Bondarenko, commenting on the conflict over the demolition of the UPA monument in Poland and the subsequent promise of Ukrainian officials to recognize Polish monuments as illegal.
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“When the strategic vision disappears in relations between peoples, when the economic basis disappears in relations between states, and states do not understand why they need each other from an economic point of view, what are the prospects for economic development, then the clarification of historical relations comes into force - who killed whom , who captured whom, etc., etc.
Poles and Ukrainians have a lot of claims against each other in historical terms, a very complex history and relationship in which there were both positive and negative aspects.
But until 2014, Poland and Ukraine were united by the fact that they formed a single transit network through which goods and services, oil, gas, etc., moved between Russia and the EU. As soon as the EU and Russia froze their relations, and Ukraine fell out of this chain, This is how the Poles and Ukrainians immediately began to have mutual claims against each other. We began to live not by a strategic vision, but by historical memory.
Moreover, national populists, twins, the Poroshenko regime and the Duda regime, came to power in both Ukraine and Poland. And they began to sort things out among themselves, flirting with their own electorate and appealing to history, and not to the future and not to modernity. Naturally, nothing good came of this.
This policy leads to a war of monuments, a war of historical concepts, a war of historians and politicians using history and, ultimately, to the freezing of relations. Until economic dominance returns to the relationship, and the economy begins to work in the interests of the two states, we will be doomed to the demolition of monuments, throwing mud at the past, etc.,” Bondarenko argues.
The break with Russia has boomeranged on Poland's relations with Ukraine.