The dispute about heroes. The historian comments. Is Zelensky looking for votes?

On Wednesday, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted the law on the National Pantheon, which was adopted at an accelerated pace. – I spoke about this act with the historians who participated in the last meeting of the president. They explained to me that they believed Zelensky pushed the bill through for political reasons, hoping it would help him win the presidential elections when they eventually took place. – says Jarosław Hrycak, Ukrainian historian and supporter of Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation, in an interview with the Polish News Agency.

He says this is a hypothesis because there is no hard evidence to support it. – Zelensky’s administration is very tight and it is difficult to know what is happening around the president, and even more difficult to understand what logic he follows. Even under the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych, things were better in this regard, he emphasizes.

The Ukrainian historian emphasizes that Iryna Vereshchuk played a special role in the adoption of this controversial law.

– The former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories is very active and tends to cause scandal. Unlike Zelensky and Budanov, who have no expertise in this area, Wereshchuk is very familiar with the history of Ukraine, including that of the UPA, because he comes from western Ukraine. I have the impression that in the president’s entourage we are dealing with a kind of competition of ideas on how to commemorate the Ukrainian Insurgent Army even more clearly – says the historian.

She was asked how come Iryna Vereshchuk’s influence has grown so much?

– Nobody knows for sure. Like Zelensky’s entire party, Vereshchuk rose to the top of politics from nowhere. After graduating, she served as an officer in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and then in 2010-2015 as mayor of Rava Ruska, a small town in western Ukraine. It was driven by the wave of rejuvenation in Ukrainian politics. In 2020, she was a Servant of the People candidate for mayor of kyiv. The campaign was led by the former Mayor of London and then Prime Minister of Great Britain, Boris Johnson.. She even carried a similar umbrella with her, but she lost to Klitschko – explains Jarosław Hrycak.

On Wednesday, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted a law establishing the National Pantheon, the bill of which was presented by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The Speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk, said: the pantheon will include “the best sons and daughters of the Ukrainian nation.”

The decision for the National Pantheon was made amid the ongoing Polish-Ukrainian conflict over historical issues, including commemorating the Ukrainian insurgent army and figures associated with it, most recently naming one of Ukraine’s military units after President Zelensky’s “UPA heroes.”

The Ukrainian insurgent army remains one of the most controversial topics in Polish-Ukrainian relations. According to Polish historians, in July 1943, UPA troops carried out coordinated attacks on around 150 Polish-inhabited towns in Volhynia, which became the culmination of a crime known in Poland as the Volhynian genocide. The perpetrators are members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists of Stepan Bandera’s faction and the UPA subordinate to him.

Poland recognizes the crimes committed against the Polish population as genocide.

Zelensky’s decision to call the military unit “UPA heroes” sparked a wave of criticism in Poland. This decision was negatively assessed by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, head of the Ministry of National Defense, Deputy Prime Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, Ministry of Diplomacy, and President Karol Nawrocki announced on June 19 that he had decided to revoke Zełenski’s Order of the White Eagle. In response, a day later, Zelensky sent the order to Warsaw via a courier company.

Former presidents of Ukraine: Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yushchenko and Petro Poroshenko also renounced the Order of the White Eagle, and other Polish state decorations were renounced by: Andriy Sybiha, the head of the cabinet of the President of Ukraine Kyrylo Budanov, his deputy Ihor Zhovkva and the Ambassador of Ukraine to Poland Vasyl Bodnar. PiS President Jarosław Kaczyński announced that he would return the Ukrainian Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise awarded to him in 2022. Other PiS politicians also announced at the end of June that they would return Ukrainian decorations: former head of the Ministry of National Defense Mariusz Błaszczak, former head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Zbigniew Rau, MEP Adam Bielan and MP Marek Kuchciński.