Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced on July 11, 2026, that Warsaw would create a memorial to civilians killed during World War II violence attributed by Poland to Ukrainian nationalist forces.
Tusk said the planned Wall of Remembrance would include an eternal flame and the names of victims who have been located and identified. He described the killings as a “genocide” committed by “Ukrainian nationalists,” while presenting remembrance and acknowledgment as foundations for reconciliation rather than hostility.
The announcement addressed a longstanding source of tension between Warsaw and Kyiv: massacres and retaliatory violence involving Polish and Ukrainian civilians during the war. According to figures cited by Poland, between 70,000 and 100,000 civilians were killed from 1943 to 1945. Reprisals are estimated to have killed as many as 12,000 Ukrainians.
The dispute centers in part on the events known as “Bloody Sunday” in 1943, when units associated with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA, and the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, or OUN, killed thousands of Poles in Volhynia, an area now in north-west Ukraine. The organizations occupy a different place in Ukrainian historical memory, where they are regarded as forces that pursued independence while fighting the Red Army and the Soviet Union.
That conflicting interpretation has continued to affect present-day relations, even as Poland has strongly supported neighboring Ukraine during Russia’s invasion. Tensions intensified in May after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said a military unit would be named after the UPA. The move caused anger in Poland, and Polish President Karol Nawrocki subsequently stripped Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest honor.
Remembrance alongside cooperation
Tusk, a former president of the European Council and a firm supporter of Ukraine, argued that truth about the past was necessary to build a peaceful European future without hatred or contempt. His remarks linked reconciliation after World War II with openly naming historical crimes.
At a commemorative ceremony in Olyka in north-west Ukraine, Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz similarly said Poland and Ukraine needed to move forward together while accepting responsibility for the past. He characterized frank discussion between the countries as part of friendship and said his purpose was to heal old wounds rather than reopen them.
Separate commemorations took place in Chelm, a south-eastern Polish border town and important rail connection to Kyiv. The ceremony was held at the location of a planned museum dedicated to those killed in Volhynia. Chelm Mayor Jakub Banaszek said the observances were not aimed at contemporary Ukraine or Ukrainian citizens and were not intended to generate division. He described them instead as an act of remembrance for victims of historical events.
The memorial project therefore enters a relationship shaped by both close wartime cooperation and unresolved disagreement over how the violence of the 1940s should be described and commemorated.
