12:28 22.04.2013

Svoboda Party sees Regions Party involvement in Polish Sejm's draft resolution declaring UPA criminals

2 min read

The Svoboda All-Ukrainian Association has criticized a draft resolution of the Polish Parliament declaring the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) as criminal organizations that committed genocide against Poles in 1939-1947, and believe that the Party of Regions was involved in drafting this document.

"This draft resolution would not contribute to understanding between our peoples," MP Yuriy Syrotiuk of the Svoboda faction told Interfax-Ukraine.

According to him, the hand of the Party of Regions can clearly be seen in the appearance of this document, which he said brings Ukraine's domestic political struggle to the international level, harming the country's national interests.

"We believe that each nation can honor its own heroes and respects the same right of other nations as regarding their heroes. Otherwise, our neighbors will bring up at an international level the issue of the 30-year Ukrainian-Polish War of 1918-1948, in which the Poles were occupiers and were committing mass murder and persecution. All this occurred on ethnic Ukrainian lands," Syrotiuk said.

Meanwhile, the Party of Regions welcomed this initiative of the Polish Sejm. In particular, MP Mykhailo Chechetov told the Segodnya newspaper: "We take our hats off to [the Polish Sejm]. This decision proves that the Poles are committed to democratic values."

As reported, the Polish parliament registered on April 11, 2013, a draft resolution on declaring the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) as criminal organizations that committed genocide against Poles in 1939-1947.

The document proposes declaring the OUN-UPA, the SS Galicia Division and the Ukrainian police in German service as criminal organizations. The document emphasizes that only the specified organizations and not the entire Ukrainian people are accused of genocide.

The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) is a Ukrainian political organization that was created in 1929 in Western Ukraine. Its immediate goal was to protect the Ukrainian population from exploitation by the Polish authorities, and its ultimate goal was an independent and unified Ukrainian state that would include territories inhabited primarily by ethnic Ukrainians but which were under the rule of the Polish, Soviet, Romanian, and Czechoslovak states.

The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) was the military wing of the organization.

The SS Galicia Division was a German Waffen SS division composed of Ukrainian volunteers from Eastern Galicia during the World War II.

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