Russia fears Polish-Ukrainian friendship

In Poland, anti-Ukrainian racism was yet revived — the same 1 that for centuries was a part of the noble and later Polish domination of Ukraine, erstwhile it was the largest colony of the Republic. And it was this colonial reflex, contempt for the subjects, that yet the Republic lost.

Poland — alongside Russia, Hungary and Romania — has a colonial past to present-day Ukraine and Ukrainians. It was inscribed in her past and culture, in the language of the elite, in a way of reasoning about the “times”, about “people from the east”. But unlike these countries, in Poland he was Jerzy Giedroć — the man who dared to cut this colonial weave. He crossed him, renounced imperial thinking, pointed out another way: reconciliation, partnership, freedom of nations.

But who present looks like Giedroycia? Today, the spirit of Sarmatian reign returns — in a modern suit, with phrases about “syphernality”, “a geopolitical realism”, “a threat from Kiev”. But it's inactive the same contempt. Same imperial tone. Same disease. And this cannot be the way of Poland — this is the way of Putin. It's Orbán's way.

A fewer days ago Nawrocki said that "Poland will not be the economical base of Ukraine". Today, he ends his run under a monument whose sole intent is to fuel the resensitism, to incite hatred, to remind who is “in charge” of memory. It's not just a run procedure. This is simply a signal for those who want Poland to be "gentlemen" again, and Ukraine to be "chams". due to the fact that you gotta play Volyn again. The magic spell "Bander" must be spoken. We request to make the impression that Ukraine is threatening again. due to the fact that the Ukrainians are next door.

The candidate-who-nothing-remembers laid a wreath at a place that the end environments consider to be a sacred sanctuary of "historical truth". I, in turn, like the term: a hatred museum built of stubborn films, inexpensive emotions and political request to beat into the drum of the past. Bo This is not a monument to the Volyn Crimes, it is simply a Polish hatred of contemporary Ukrainians.

Such an approach to the past will not aid us to realize or free ourselves from it. The intent of specified communicative is to fuel hatred, and it was hatred in Polish-Ukrainian relations that led to the Volyn crime. By Ukrainians, this monument will be considered another example of the stupidity and cynical usage of the crime by Polish environments rubbing against prokremlian eugenic Nazism.

Even among the most faithful “cresovians” there have been voices that something smells like... a campaign. People who applauded the unveiling a year ago present ask: “Where was he erstwhile he was president? Why didn't he come then? Why now, erstwhile he needed our voices, abruptly he discovered that Volyn existed?’ Even the hardest “draw” spines sense falseness and marketing.

Because he's not curious in history. Just as it was not the case with the communists who in the Polish People's Republic created a comfortable communicative about the “badder danger” — present repeated thoughtlessly by “patriots” raised in reading the civic militia and the PZPR. It's something completely different: a sense of superiority. Power over narrative. The right to be humiliated.

It is not Bandera for Poles present that he is simply a neighbour, a colleague or a seller in a store. The point is to feel better than a neighbour who does not have a Polish passport. Who has no voice.

It's not a story. It's a colonial reflex. It's the instinct of control. And that leads us in a very bad direction.

I'm not naive. I know politics is frequently emotional. But it hurts that in Poland, which so widely opened hearts and homes for Ukrainians in 2022, the same people present hear that they are a burden. Problem. A threat.

All this — the rejection of Giedroycia, the heat of Volyn, the ridicule of migrants, the increase in xenophobia — leads us to a very dark road. And who knows if it's not the same 1 she erstwhile brought the Republic to ruin.

Igor Isaev, Ukrainian in Poland