Poland has emerged as one of Ukraine’s most ardent supporters during Russia’s invasion despite historical grievances between the neighbouring nations that stir up bad feelings to this day.
The tensions between the country at war and its staunch ally were acknowledged Wednesday when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a state visit to Poland, where President Andrzej Duda received him with honours.
Duda promised that Poland would keep helping Ukraine fight off Russia’s aggression, but he also acknowledged at a joint news conference with Zelesnkyy that the relationship was complicated.
”There are still open wounds in the memory of many people,” Duda said, an obvious reference to the massacres of some 100,000 Poles by Ukrainian nationalists during the 1940s. Poland considers the killings genocide.
The difficult part in Poland-Ukraine relations goes back even further than that. In a part of Europe where entire nations have disappeared from maps for generations before returning from the ashes of collapsed empires, sometimes at the expense of neighbors, Poles and Ukrainians share a history of the existential rivalry.
