Vasily Bodnar, Ukraine’s outgoing Ambassador to Poland who’s poised to return to his prior role as Deputy Foreign Minister, doubled down on his defense of Bandera in an interview with local media. He infamously denied that Bandera was a war criminal earlier this year and reaffirmed his position. In Bodnar’s words, Bandera is “one of those who needs to be honored. He is one of the leaders of the national liberation movement”, though he also admitted that some members thereof slaughtered Poles.
At the same time, Bodnar tried to equate the Volhynia Genocide with what some Poles did to Ukrainians. According to him, “there were also a large number of criminal acts against Ukrainians by the Poles. And not only by the Polish underground, but also by representatives of the Polish state. There were repressions, there were pacifications, there were so-called revindication, when Ukrainian churches were destroyed, there were murders sanctioned by Polish political leaders, there was the ‘Vistula’ operation.”
Bodnar went even further by defending Zelensky’s glorification of the OUN-UPA as his country’s “right to make sovereign decisions” in an attempt to imply that Poland’s rage in response to that fateful move was hegemonic in an echo of Zelensky’s Chief of Staff Kirill Budanov false comparison of Poland with Russia. He also claimed that the aforesaid response was due to “a very successful special operation…somehow directed from a third country” in a hint that Poles were doing Russia’s bidding by condemning Ukraine.
None of what he said was surprising since Bodnar is known to be a fierce defender of Bandera and the OUN-UPA, which aligns with the position of the government that he represents, but it’s still important to draw attention to due to the role that he’s expected to resume. It’s no small matter that he’ll return to being Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister after all that he’s said and done against Poland during his nearly two years in office since this will further solidify the newly anti–Polish nature of the Ukrainian State.
The state-level glorification of anti-Polish genocidaires, including the seemingly inevitable repatriation of Bandera’s remains and subsequent interment in Ukraine’s “national pantheon”, will ensure that bilateral ties are never fully normalized and will consequently remain competitive. As it presently stands, “Poland Finally Realizes The Geostrategic Challenge Posed By Ukraine”, namely as a German–backed rival for leadership over Central & Eastern Europe and especially the Baltic States.
If the newly divided conservative opposition and the two libertarian-nationalist parties unseat the ruling liberal coalition after fall 2027’s next Sejm elections, which is possible since they now command 50.6% support per reputable polling, then the aforesaid trend will intensify. After all, the leading conservative opposition party’s PM candidate called on the EU to stop funding Ukrainian arms, and his party also just declared that they’ll deport unemployed and illegally employed Ukrainians if they return to power.
Moreover, “Public Pressure Is Pushing Poland’s Ruling Liberals To Harden Their Approach To Ukraine” for similar electioneering reasons, so Polish-Ukrainian ties aren’t expected to improve anytime soon. With Bandera-defending Bodnar poised to resume his prior role as Deputy Foreign Minister, relations might deteriorate even more in the coming future, which can’t be ruled out. Therefore, for the time being, the revived Polish-Ukrainian rivalry will remain one of the most significant variables in regional geopolitics.
