Kyiv is using archives and exhumations to contain a historical dispute that risks damaging one of Ukraine’s most important wartime partnerships.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has promised wider access to Ukrainian security and intelligence archives, further exhumations and additional historical investigations after a dispute with Poland over honours granted to a Ukrainian nationalist military figure.
Zelenskyy chaired a meeting of senior officials dedicated to relations with Poland and said improving ties was essential given Warsaw’s support since Russia’s full-scale invasion.
The dispute concerns Ukraine’s decision in May to honour a military unit associated with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA. In Poland, the UPA remains linked to wartime massacres of Polish civilians in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. For many Ukrainians, parts of the UPA legacy are tied to anti-Soviet resistance and national independence. Those incompatible memories have repeatedly strained relations.
Poland-Ukraine Military Naming Row Exposes Wartime Alliance Fault Line
The new commitments matter because they are practical rather than rhetorical. Archive access, exhumations and historical investigations can produce evidence, identify victims and create a process for dialogue. They do not guarantee reconciliation, but they move the dispute away from symbolic argument alone.
EU Today has previously examined the politics of Polish-Ukrainian historical memory and the dangers of selective remembrance in the wider bilateral relationship. The latest development advances that story because it gives Kyiv’s response an institutional form.
Ukraine, Poland and the problem of memory without clean hands: EU Today podcast
The stakes are current, not only historical. Poland remains a crucial logistics, military and diplomatic partner for Ukraine. It is also a major voice inside EU debates on Ukraine’s accession, sanctions and reconstruction. A prolonged memory dispute could weaken public support and give opponents of Ukrainian aid a sharper domestic argument.
Warsaw will now judge whether Kyiv’s measures produce access and exhumations in practice. Zelenskyy will need to reassure Ukrainians that historical openness is not a concession under pressure, while convincing Poles that wartime alliance does not require silence about past atrocities.
The dispute shows how memory politics can become strategic policy. For Ukraine, repairing trust with Poland is not a cultural side issue. It is part of maintaining the coalition that sustains its war effort and European path.
The Follies of Historical Memory: Poland, Ukraine and the Politics of Selective Remembrance by Dr Bohdan Vitvitsky
