A Polish American leader slammed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for naming an army unit after a Nazi-affiliated group in an exclusive interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
On May 26, Zelenskyy’s office renamed the Ukrainian army unit after the Ukrainska Povstanska Armiia (UPA), a group that committed genocide against 100,000 Polish civilians in the Volhynian Massacres during World War II. The backlash was swift, and the move was denounced by critics across the world, including the president of the Polish American PAC, Piotr Nowocień.
“I think Zelenskyy did it for political reasons, because of the corruption in Ukraine, and his difficult situation,” Nowocień told the DCNF. “We have many Ukrainians in Poland, and that’s fine. We are happy to have them, but naming the military unit after [the] Ukrainian insurgent army … It’s not fair, because the UPA, they killed more than 100,000 people.”
Polish President Karol Nawrocki stripped Zelenskyy of a highly-regarded Polish honor, the Order of the White Eagle, after he named the unit in honor of the genocidal WWII partisans, according to the Office of the President of Poland.
The Separate Special Operations Center North of the Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was named after the Heroes of the UPA, according to a translation of the May 26 press release from Ukrainian News.
The European Parliament criticized Zelenskyy for the decision to rename the unit in a resolution approved by a majority of Members of the European Parliament on Wednesday.
President Zelenskyy’s office, Polish President Nawrocki’s office and the Ukrainian embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, does not appear to have responded to the European Parliament’s condemnation. He previously defended Ukraine’s right to honor its own national figures, with his office saying on June 28 that “no one, ever, will dictate” which heroes Ukraine should honor.
“It was like 100,000 civilians, children, women,” Nowocień told the DCNF. “Most of them, they still don’t have proper graves, and Poland recognizes [it] as genocide, and many historians call it, like, how to say, ethic cleansing with genocidal features. So Ukrainians wanted to remove Poles and Jews from the land.”
“I know the story about UPA, about the Ukrainian insurgent army, from my grandmother. She’s 94 now. She’s still alive, and she’s from Volhynia, it was part of Poland before World War Two, and now is Ukraine,” Nowocień told the DCNF. “They told us like terrible story about that, and so in Poland, you know, it’s like part of it’s not only part of history, it’s like part of personal trauma. I would say.”
Nowocień claimed that the UPA helped form the Nazi Galicia SS Division. The story is more complicated than that, but some historians claim there are ties between the SS unit and the UPA.
Roman-Taras Osypovych Shukhevych, a UPA military leader, said that he respected Nazi Galicia SS Division volunteers and “considered them true Ukrainian patriots,” according to a book from 1997 titled “Galicia Division: the Waffen-SS 14th Grenadier Division 1943-1945.”
“You can find many, many photos of Ukrainian soldiers with UPA flags and with Nazi symbols,” Nowocień told the DCNF.
One famous instance of the UPA flag being displayed with Nazi symbols was seen when Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, conducted a video interview with Ukrainian soldiers with a UPA flag that contained a Sonnenrad, also known as the Black Sun, a notorious Nazi symbol. The video was reposted on X by United24, a pro-Ukraine media group.
Children of the Ukrainian military adore #StarWars. So, they asked @MarkHamill what his favorite film is from the saga.
Listen to Mark’s answer to the Ukrainian defenders during their meeting.https://t.co/97zLssLWrw pic.twitter.com/sne8fueK93— UNITED24 (@U24_gov_ua) April 14, 2023
United24 did not respond to a request for comment.
Nowocień explained that Poland is one of the biggest military donors to the Ukrainian army, and that it is not okay to put the name of an anti-Polish militia on units that may have been armed by Poland.
Bandera’s Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its military wing, the UPA, were responsible for the genocide in Poland, according to volhyniamassacre.eu.
Throughout the Russo-Ukrainian war, members of the Ukrainian army have been seen with Nazi symbols and memorabilia.
An official X post from the Ukrainian military depicts a Ukrainian soldier wearing the Totenkopf, or Death’s Head, a Nazi symbol from WWII. The New York Times archived the post and reported on it on June 5, 2023.
Marta Havryshko, a faculty member at Clark University, documented several instances of the Ukrainian military flaunting Nazi imagery on their gear and in tattoos in an X post on Oct. 31, 2024, including Nazi SS lightning bolts.
What do I mean by legitimizing Nazi symbols in the Ukrainian military?
Meet the “Vedmedi” (Bears) unit in the 36th Separate Marine Brigade. On its official logo, you will see SS bolts. “Vedmedi’” slogan: “My Honor Is Loyalty” (Meine Ehre heißt Treue, which was the motto of the… pic.twitter.com/4exccHH6XD
— Marta Havryshko (@HavryshkoMarta) October 31, 2024
The brutality of the UPA was terrorism, Nowocień said.
“My grandmother told me, like she survived only because someone risked their life to hide her, and there are many, there are many stories that you know, children and families, they were murdered with axes, with pitchforks, with nails, and other very primitive tools, so it wasn’t normal war, it was terror against civilians,” Nowocień told the DCNF.
“I don’t think they need to honor Bandera to be effective and to be united. Why they are doing it, I have no idea,” Nowocień told the DCNF. “In my opinion, Zelenskyy uses it for political reasons. Maybe he wanted to escalate some kind of misunderstanding with Poland, for like interior political reasons, but it’s, it’s, it’s not, it’s not necessary”
Nowocień said that just because Russia invaded Ukraine, Europeans don’t have to agree with everything that Zelenskyy does.
“Nothing is black and white, and the worst thing is when you, when you don’t agree with something, what Zelenskyy is doing, and then they tell that you are, oh, you are pro-Russia, you’re a Russian agent, so we see it all over Europe,” Nowocień told the DCNF. “This is very stupid, because nothing is black and white, that of course Ukraine is in very bad situation in the war with Russia, they were Ukraine was attacked by Russia, but it doesn’t mean they can do whatever they want.”
(DCNF)
