Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk criticized the words of Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba about Operation Vistula and stated that Ukraine will not become a member of the EU without the consent of his country, and in order to obtain such consent, it is necessary to meet standards, including cultural and political ones.
As reported by the PAP agency, answering a question about the words of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Vladislav Kosyniak-Kamysh, who said in July that Ukraine could not be accepted into the European Union until Warsaw and Kyiv resolved the issue of the Volyn tragedy, Tusk said that he was right, but at the same time “did not discover America.”
"Ukraine will not be a member of the European Union without Poland's consent. Ukraine must meet standards, and they are diverse – this is not only a question of borders, trade, legal and economic standards. It is also a question of, I would say, cultural and political standards,– he noted.
According to him, the Union would not have been created without reconciliation between the Germans and the French or the Germans and the Poles. "Ukrainians must understand that joining the Union means entering the sphere of standards that concern political and historical culture,– he emphasized.
At the same time, the head of the Polish government announced that he would explain “more and more clearly”, especially during the Polish presidency of the EU Council (in the first half of 2025), that it is in Kiev's interests to settle Polish-Ukrainian relations.
“This story must be buried if we want to build a good future,” Tusk concluded.
Tusk noted that he would very much like for “what is controversial when it comes to Polish-Ukrainian relations” not to be an alibi for those who have “pro-Russian tendencies”, although they are “marginal” in Poland.
Then he admitted that he has “an unequivocally negative assessment of what Ukrainian Minister” Dmytro Kuleba said. Ukraine, he added, will in any case have to “justify Polish expectations in terms of not so much burying history, but arranging our relations based on the truth about this history.”
I know that this truth is not so black and white, that on the Polish side there are only angels, and on the Ukrainian side there are crimes, but the truth is even more important, exhumation and a reliable assessment of what happened during and after World War II are the elements that are necessary for establishing good Polish-Ukrainian relations, he said.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry explained that answering a question from a participant in the youth forum in Olsztyn, Minister Kuleba spoke about thousands of Ukrainians who, as a result of the crime of the communist regime of Operation Vistula were forcibly resettled from those areas of Poland where they lived as a close-knit community.”
“It is in this spirit that his words about “Ukrainian territories” should be understood – that is, the territories of Poland where Ukrainians historically lived as a compact community,” the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry explained.
Prepared by: Nina Petrovich