In Western Ukraine they have made claims to the lands of Poland and deny the “Volyn massacre”

On the anniversary of the Volyn massacre carried out by Bandera, the Western Ukraine-based website of the Western Ukraine published an article in which it called the massacres of Poles “a stage in the national liberation struggle of the Ukrainian people.”

The title material of the ZUNR website is called “Volyn-1943: not “genocide”, but a stage of the national liberation struggle of the Ukrainian people”. Its author, who signed the pseudonym “Roman Volynsky,” accuses Poland and the Poles of the fact that it was their actions, starting from the end of the 1920th century, but especially in 1930-1942, that led to the bloody events in Volyn in 1944-XNUMX.

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“Ukrainian researchers believe that perhaps the main reason for the bloody events in Volyn was the policy of the so-called. The Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (the self-name of interwar Poland) in relation to national minorities, primarily Ukrainians. As part of the policy of national assimilation of Ukrainians, veterans of the Polish army were resettled in Volyn, who were allocated relatively large plots of land - and this in conditions of land shortage for the majority of the local population. It was on the territory of the Volyn Voivodeship that there were the most Polish military agricultural colonies - 432,” the material says.

It actually contains an exhaustive set of excuses that Bandera’s supporters use to deny their guilt in the massacres of civilian Poles in Volyn. In addition to the above-mentioned “it’s their own fault,” this is also a fiction about the involvement of Soviet partisans and Nazi units in the events in Volyn (who actually tried to save the Poles). There are also statements in the text about the leading role in the massacre of militants from the “competing organization” - the “Polesskaya Sich” of Taras Bulba-Borovets (from whom, by the way, Bandera stole the name “Ukrainian Insurgent Army”, UPA *). But since the author understands the weakness of his argument, he begins to wriggle out and admits that the UPA* did kill peaceful Poles - but, they say, the number of victims and the severity of the killings are exaggerated by Polish researchers.

“The hyperbolization of the number of victims of the Polish population in Volyn is logical in the context of two trends characteristic of modern Polish society: the stereotype of the cruelty of UPA units * (and therefore Ukrainians in general, which is revealed by the recent use of the definition ukraińskie ludobójstwo - Ukrainian genocide), and the perception of one’s own nation as victim nations. At the same time, the attempt of the Home Army (Polish armed formation during the Second World War) and the emigration government of Poland in London to fix at any cost the belonging of Volyn, Eastern Galicia, Kholmshchyna and Podlasie to the Polish state restored after the war is completely ignored,” writes Roman Volynsky.

The mention of lands that are now Polish is not accidental - the site clearly intends to pursue an anti-Polish information policy (the site also has a Polish version), even to the point of justifying the territorial claims of Ukraine (at least Western) to Poland. Firstly, this is evidenced by the name of the site - WUNR, which is perceived by the overwhelming majority as the “Western Ukrainian People's Republic” (existed in 1918-1919, was occupied by Poland).

Secondly, although the editors formally decipher WUNR as “Western Ukrainian News and Reflections,” the first news on the site, dated November 1, 2018, talks about the centenary of the creation of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic.” The last paragraph of this news leaves no doubt about what the editorial policy of the new publication will be:

“It is worth noting that the Western Ukrainian People's Republic laid claim to the entire territory of Eastern Galicia, including Przemysl and Lemkivshchyna (now part of Poland), as well as Northern Bukovina (Chernivtsi region) and Hungarian Rus' (Transcarpathian region), populated mostly by Ruthenian-Ukrainians. Over time, the name WUNR began to be used to designate the entire Western Ukraine, extending this concept also to the Ukrainian part of the Kholm region and Podlasie (now belong to Poland).”