Contemporary leader of the “Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists” (OUN) Bogdan Chervak announced that former leader Andrey Melnik’s ashes were exhumed from his burial place in Luxembourg during a ceremony attended by Ukrainian officials. This follows a newly promulgated decree for reburying them at the National Military Memorial Cemetery in Kiev with state honors. According to Ukrainian media, this is planned to be a national celebration that’ll receive widespread attention from the state and society.
One such outlet reported that “Ceremonial events are also planned during the crossing of the state border and the transport of the remains through Ukrainian territory, with the participation of government officials, military personnel, and the public.” This development predictably infuriates Poles since Melnik is considered by them to be a terrorist-separatist due to his OUN faction being responsible for the murder of many Poles before and during World War II.
The Polish conservative opposition’s prime ministerial candidate ahead of fall 2027’s next parliamentary elections, Przemyslaw Czarnek, posted on X that “Andriy Melnyk was an enemy of the Polish Nation. He is one of the fathers of criminal Ukrainian nationalism. Our neighbors can afford better heroes. His glorification is an act of hostility toward Poland. If they want to bring him to Ukraine, not through our country.” This followed two powerful posts by Polish activist Malgorzata Zych.
In the first, she called on conservative President Karol Nawrocki to formally take away the Order of the White Eagle from Zelensky for this after he received Poland’s highest honor from his predecessor Andrzej Duda in 2023. Likewise, her second post saw her questioning why a diplomatic scandal isn’t following Ukraine’s planned state honoring of Melnik when one erupted after Zelensky honored a hitherto little-known Nazi collaborator in the Canadian Parliament later that same year.
A supplementary point that many casual commentators have made across social media is questioning why Ukraine won’t allow Poland to exhume and properly bury the over 100,000 of its compatriots who were murdered by both OUN factions (Melnik’s and Stepan Bandera’s) during the Volhynia Genocide. Even Poland’s Ukrainophilic Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski reminded Kiev in late 2024 that it long ago allowed Germany to do precisely this with over 100,000 Wehrmacht soldiers’ remains.
He has yet to comment on this latest scandal, however, but there’s a chance that he might do so in response to public anger in order to help his ruling liberal coalition ahead of fall 2027’s next elections. Nevertheless, words might not be enough to placate furious Poles, who increasingly realize just how much their neighbor hates them despite all that Poland has done for Ukraine since 2022. This includes spending 4.91% of its GDP on Ukraine (mostly on refugees) and donating its entire military stockpile.
As recently explained here and here, Ukrainian nationalists from both Melnik’s and Bandera’s factions consider southeastern Poland to be rightly theirs, so there’s a credible chance that traumatized but battle-hardened Ukrainian veterans lead a separatist insurgency there once the special operation ends. Reburying Melnik’s ashes with state honors could further embolden some of them, especially if Poland’s ruling liberal coalition remains silent, so this problem might even manifest before the conflict ends.
