© David Guttenfelder/The New York Times
The strange historical dispute between Poland and Ukraine, in which Polish officials keep making demands upon Ukraine, seems unwilling to die down. Most recently, on October 20 the L’viv oblast (regional) council announced plans to honor the World War II-era Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and its military leader, Roman Shukhevych. The council declared 2027 as the Year of the UPA, the Year of Shukhevych and the Year of Oleh Olzhych, a Ukrainian poet and political activist. In response, the Polish charge d’affaires in Kyiv, Piotr Lukasiewicz, responded by stating that “glorifying the UPA and criminal figures runs counter to European values and the strategic and neighborly relations between Ukraine and Poland.” Similar statements were then echoed by other Polish officials, including ministers. Are the Poles right about it being the Ukrainians who are running afoul of European values? And are Poles right to think that they have the right and the authority to police whom in history Ukraine chooses to memorialize? I would suggest that the answer to both questions is no.
Sovereign equality is a fundamental principle in international law that asserts that all states are equal, regardless of their size or power. The equality of states is a fundamental constitutional principle that governs how the European Union functions. As a general proposition, it is, thus, contrary to European values for Poland or Polish officials to assume that Poland has some sort a special right to dictate to Ukraine whom it may or may not memorialize, as one can presume that Poland would vigorously reject Ukraine’s or anyone else’s attempt to tell Poland which historical figures it may or may not memorialize based on that outside country’s views of the demerits of Poland’s various heroes.
But given the spirit behind the set of values that developed after the horrors of World War II and after the Western European countries finally lost all of their colonies by the 1960s, there are certain actions by Ukraine or any European country that could merit criticism or even condemnation. For example, it is incontestable that in the summer of 1943 the UPA, which was newly formed in Volyn, attacked Polish villages and there killed civilian men, women and children in the tens of thousands. It is also incontestable that according to most definitions, that massacre was a war crime. With respect to these events, what actions by contemporary Ukrainians could merit condemnation? There are two. First, if any Ukrainian official or political figure or public intellectual or organization were to deny that this massacre took place, he/she/they/it would clearly merit condemnation. Have any current or recent Ukrainian officials or other spokespersons denied the occurrence of the Volyn massacre? The answer is no.
Second, if any Ukrainian official or political figure or public intellectual or organization were to admit that the Volyn massacre took place but nevertheless deny that it was a war crime or actually condone it on the basis of some one or another historical Ukrainian grievance against the Poles, that would, in accord with contemporary European values, merit condemnation. Have any current or recent Ukrainian officials or other spokespersons denied that the massacres of Poles were a war crime or maintain that for some reason these massacres were to be viewed approvingly? The answer, once again, is no.
So why do Polish officials still complain? They complain because in effect they want to assert that they have the right more generally to be the ones to define Ukraine’s historical past. As the great British historian of Poland Norman Davies has pointed out, this is absurd. About 4% or 5% of the soldiers in UPA participated in the Volyn killings, and in fact most of the members of UPA joined after 1943. UPA is memorialized in Ukraine because of the extraordinary heroism of many, but certainly not all, of its members in the Ukrainian anti-colonial struggle against the Poles, the Germans and the Soviets that extended into the 1950s against the Soviets. The Poles seem to think that, ignoring what UPA did against the Germans and for much longer against the Soviets, and regardless how large or how small was the percentage of the UPA that was involved in the 1943 massacre, it is what happened to the Poles who were massacred that is more important than all else and it must be that which defines who and what UPA was. The Poles are of course entitled to view the UPA however they choose, but they insist on more. They insist on having the right to dictate to Ukrainians how to view the UPA.
There is another major problem with Polish complaints about Ukrainian memorialization. It is the problem of moral standing. The Polish minority in Volyn, about at most 16% in the interwar period, represented the nation that had militarily conquered and then occupied Volyn and other parts of western Ukraine. Ukrainians constituted between 65% and 70% of Volyn’s population. Some among the Polish minority were the descendants of the Polish lords and their administrators who had colonized Ukraine in the 15th – 17th centuries when Ukrainians were enserfed, a form of slavery that continued into the 19th century. In the interwar period between World War I and II, the Polish minority maintained its political, economic, educational and cultural domination of the Ukrainian majority. And, during World War II, the Polish government in exile in London continued to insist that Poland had the right to include Volyn in Poland and thus to continue to maintain dominion over the Ukrainian majority living there. None of this obscures what was a war crime, but given the Polish history of domination and exploitation of Ukrainians, it does call into serious question whether today’s Poles as putative representatives of the historical Polish nation should today have moral standing to make complaints against Ukrainians.
Lastly, killing civilians is killing civilians. It is a war crime. As has been well documented, during World War II various Polish units, including units of the Polish Home Army, which army is widely venerated and memorialized in Poland, attacked Ukrainian villages and killed civilian men, women and children. Those killings are often waived off as supposedly “retaliatory” attacks, but that is nonsense. The villages that were attacked were not even in Volyn but were simply Ukrainian. So if today’s Poles think that they have a right to make grievance claims on historical memory relating to events multiple generations ago, then they must also accept the burdens of accepting grievance claims against them. To put it in legal terminology, as regards history, it’s not as if Poles had clean hands.
In light of all of the above considerations, and with the exceptions discussed above, contemporary Polish officials do not have the right to routinely keep injecting themselves into Ukrainian decisions to memorialize historical figures that, for Ukrainians, were predecessors of Ukraine’s current efforts to fight off yet another attempt to subjugate it.
Dr. Bohdan Vitvitsky is a retired federal prosecutor and a former U.S. diplomat who holds a Ph.D. in philosophy.
Key developments on Oct. 23:
© Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
© Eric Lee for The New York Times
Dans ce sixième numéro de Moreau Décrypte, Xavier Moreau analyse la grande désillusion qui s’empare d’une partie des Ukrainiens. À Kiev, beaucoup observent avec inquiétude l’évolution de la position américaine, marquée par une priorité croissante accordée aux négociations et à un rééquilibrage des relations avec les grandes puissances, tandis que des discussions diplomatiques impliquant Washington, Moscou et d’autres acteurs internationaux
Publié à l’origine par divergencepolitique.fr
By Ted SNIDER
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The Ukrainian leader faces escalating crises.
Like the man in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky may be crying, “I’m not dead.” It is too early to perform a postmortem on Zelensky’s political career. But it may not be premature to attempt an analysis of his deteriorating condition and struggle to survive.
Zelensky’s strength is being undermined on four fronts: overall domestic support, support from his party, financial support from Europe, and a collapsing relationship with President Donald Trump.
Polls show that Ukrainians, who wanted Zelensky to lead them through the war, no longer want him to lead them after the war. Indeed, having fed Ukrainians with fantastical promises of pushing Russia out of all Ukrainian lands and being welcomed into NATO, and having depended on a cooperative relationship with Ukrainian ultranationalists who oppose a compromise peace with Moscow, Zelensky may have put himself into a position where his presidency cannot survive the war. Polling shows a collapse of domestic support for Zelensky, suggesting that he would lose by a wide margin in the next election.
But, while the foreign media has been entirely focused on the war, domestic attention in Ukraine has also turned to corruption. Zelensky was elected on the twin platform of making peace with Russia and ending Ukraine’s self-destructive corruption. He has delivered on neither.
A key metric is Zelensky’s trust rating. Asked recently which political figures they trust, Ukrainians ranked their president a damning sixth, with only 18 percent of respondents fully trusting him. His main potential political rivals, Valeriy Zaluzhny, Kyrylo Budanov, and Mykhailo Fedorov are all more trusted. A fifth of those who say they do not trust Zelensky cite corruption as the main reason, and 72 percent of Ukrainians say he is personally responsible for corruption in his government. Amid his latest spat with Trump, one recent poll found Zelensky’s trust rating had risen, but the overall trend is still bad, and the rally-around-the-flag effect may prove fleeting. Zelensky has hurt himself with his handling of a snowballing corruption scandal that is reaching deeper and deeper into his inner circle.
And Ukraine’s president is not only losing ground with voters—he’s also losing the support of his party, which once was solidly behind him. He is being confronted by unfamiliar resistance, with dozens of MPs in his Servant of the People party boycotting or rebelling. His legislative supermajority is reportedly at risk as a result of defections.
The lack of support at home also puts in jeopardy EU funding on which the Ukrainian government relies. Ukraine is facing a massive budgetary shortfall totaling tens of billions of dollars. Kiev wants money promised by the EU for 2027 to be provided sooner. But the release of badly needed funds from the EU is contingent on the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, enacting corruption reforms—and Zelensky’s party has refused to pass such measures. Even a package of tax bills that was passed last week and that could unlock $4.3 billion dealt only with less controversial items, and avoided addressing many of the more serious demands being made by the EU.
Earlier this month, the EU rejected Zelensky’s appeals and refused to accelerate payments to cover the shortfall, again tying funding to corruption reform. According to Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico, neither Slovakia nor Hungary will participate in another EU loan to Ukraine. Other, more pro-Ukraine EU nations would have trouble filling the gaps. France, for example, is convulsed by riots motivated in part by the rising cost of living, and populist critics of the establishment are quick to remind voters of the vast sums that have already been sent to Ukraine. The right-wing leader Marine Le Pen, currently the favorite to win France’s next presidential election, recently said that, if she wins, Paris will cut financial aid to Ukraine.
But Zelensky’s biggest challenge comes from Ukraine’s most crucial supporter. Shaky relations with U.S. presidents are nothing new for Zelensky. In the first year of the war, when Joe Biden authorized further military assistance for Ukraine, Zelensky complained about what he wasn’t getting. Biden reportedly “lost his temper” during a call with the Ukrainian leader. “Raising his voice,” he told Zelensky to “show a little more gratitude.” The next year, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times reported, “There is deep mistrust between the White House and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine—considerably more than has been reported.”
But Zelensky managed those challenges. Even following last year’s public debacle that saw Trump throw him out of the Oval Office, Zelensky was able to repair his relationship with Trump. That work has now exploded.
Earlier this month, Trump made three decisions that seemed to collectively amount to a breaking point for a reluctantly conciliatory Zelensky. He made a deal with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin that would allow Russia to sell diesel fuel, he announced a surprise energy ceasefire that demanded Ukrainian armed forces stop all strikes on Russian refineries, and he waived new sanctions on Russia.
This trio of announcements apparently led Zelensky to conclude that his conciliatory approach was no longer working. According to a person close to Zelensky, he let it be known that “plain speaking” was now needed, and he made the decision to publicly criticize Trump.
Zelensky said Trump’s behavior “is certainly not how partners should treat each other.” When Ukraine struck another Russian refinery, Trump said Zelensky “better damn well stop.” Zelensky said Trump was not being fair or honest. He called Trump weak, and juxtaposed his leadership to the “real leaders” in Europe. Trump fired back, declaring, “I think it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president…. I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal.” Trump later expanded: “I think if they are going to end up with a settlement of some kind, they are not going to do it with him.” On Monday, Trump added, “To be honest, I think it’s time for somebody else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine.”
The gloves were off, and Zelensky was in danger of losing Trump. The military-grade version of Starlink, which Ukrainians use for battlefield communications, as well as U.S. early warnings of incoming Russian missiles went silent. “He is not a good guy for us to deal with,” Trump said of Zelensky Friday, adding that he is “more difficult to deal with than Putin.” Zelensky, he said, had “destroyed that country.”
When Russia kept pounding Ukraine’s electricity grid with drones, ballistic and hypersonic missiles, and with access to U.S. intelligence was restricted, Zelensky defied Trump’s orders, letting it be known that the block on attacking Russian refineries was off.
Zelensky is a political survivor, but the latest constellation of crises is the most difficult challenge to his leadership yet.
Original article: www.theamericanconservative.com
A novembre Russia e Ucraina faranno un nuovo tentativo per arrivare a un accordo di pace. Dopo i colloqui indiretti favoriti dalla mediazione degli Stati Uniti ma poi naufragati, un nuovo round si terrà, come ipotizzato nei giorni scorsi, ad Abu Dhabi, negli Emirati Arabi Uniti. Ad annunciarlo è stato il portavoce del Cremlino, Dmitry Peskov, con la Russia che si è dichiarata pronta a riprendere i colloqui di pace, in stallo dall’inizio dell’anno, dopo un incontro avvenuto mercoledì tra il presidente russo Vladimir Putin e Steve Witkoff, inviato speciale di Donald Trump. Anche il presidente ucraino Volodymyr Zelensky si era espresso a favore.
L’Europa, come dall’inizio del conflitto, viene esclusa dai tavoli dei negoziati, pur essendo rimasto, dopo il disimpegno di Trump, il principale sostenitore dell’Ucraina. In quasi 5 anni di guerra non ha ancora nominato un suo mediatore da proporre in sede di negoziati, tema sul quale governi e famiglie politiche si sono già scontrate. Adesso, secondo il Daily Telegraph, nella shortlist dei cinque papabili figurerebbe anche quello della presidente del Consiglio, Giorgia Meloni. Insieme a lei, tra i candidati ci sono, si legge, il presidente finlandese Alexander Stubb, quello ceco Petr Pavel, la premier danese Mette Frederiksen e il premier norvegese Jonas Gahr Store.
Nomi che, però, rischiano di essere respinti in blocco da Mosca. Per due motivi. Il primo, il Cremlino non ha intenzione di accogliere al tavolo un ulteriore soggetto determinato a difendere i diritti e gli interessi dell’Ucraina, rafforzando così anche la posizione di Zelensky. Il secondo, quattro di questi nomi sono esponenti delle istituzioni di Paesi Ue che la Russia considera soggetti attivi nel conflitto, dato che forniscono aiuti militari ed economici all’esercito ucraino, e quindi incandidabili per il ruolo di mediatore. Diversa la posizione del premier norvegese che, comunque, rimane capo dell’esecutivo di un Paese Nato.
Un portavoce della Commissione Ue ha intanto fatto sapere, nel corso del consueto midday briefing, che l’Unione sta “lavorando costantemente affinché l’Ucraina si trovi, innanzitutto, in una posizione di forza e affinché si raggiunga una pace giusta e duratura. Attualmente ci aspettiamo che si terranno dei colloqui a livello multilaterale con alti funzionari. L’Ue sarà presente a questi colloqui che si terranno nel prossimo futuro. Il formato dovrebbe essere simile a quello dei precedenti colloqui, ad esempio quelli di Miami“.
L'articolo A novembre negoziati tra Russia e Ucraina ad Abu Dhabi. Gli Stati Uniti saranno mediatori proviene da Il Fatto Quotidiano.
© Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times
Raggiungere un accordo sulla situazione in Ucraina è possibile. Almeno a sentire le ultime dichiarazioni del presidente russo Vladimir Putin: “Siamo concordi su questo”, ha detto il leader russo riferendosi alla fattibilità di un’intesa di lungo termine che chiuda l’invasione iniziata il 24 febbraio 2022. Al centro della disputa restano sempre le porzioni di territorio ucraino, attualmente occupate dalle forze di Mosca, che il capo del Cremlino ha definito “storicamente russe”, alzando la posta in gioco nei negoziati per risolvere il conflitto.
Putin ha definito “inappropriata” la dichiarazione del leader ucraino Vladimir Zelensky, secondo cui sarebbe disposto ad accettare la perdita di alcuni territori pur di raggiungere la pace, aggiungendo che i territori in questione sono storicamente russi: “Innanzitutto, la mia opinione su questa questione è che non si tratta di territorio russo, ma di territorio storicamente russo”, ha dichiarato Putin in un’intervista al conduttore Pavel Zarubin. “Le persone che vivono in questi territori hanno votato, in primo luogo, per l’indipendenza dello Stato e, in secondo luogo, per la riunificazione con la Federazione Russa”, ha affermato. “Pertanto, parlare di eventuali perdite territoriali mi sembra inappropriato”, ha concluso.
Un eventuale vertice tra Putin, Zelensky e Donald Trump potrebbe essere il formato con il quale finalizzare la possibile intesa? “La discussione è in corso”, ha rimarcato il vice ministro degli Esteri russo, Serghei Ryabkov, il giorno dopo il faccia a faccia tra Putin e l’inviato statunitense Steve Witkoff. “L’argomento è stato sollevato” mercoledì durante le tre ore di confronto tra i due a San Pietroburgo, ma “al momento non c’è ancora una chiara comprensione in merito”, poiché “non c’è un accordo completo, ma la discussione è in corso”. È ancora presto per parlare di una vera e propria apertura, anche se Trump – che ha intanto chiesto a Elon Musk di riattivare totalmente l’uso di Starlink in Ucraina – si è lasciato andare nelle ultime ore all’ottimismo affermando che “ci stiamo avvicinando alla risoluzione della guerra” e forse – ha aggiunto – “è il punto in cui siamo stati più vicini finora”.
L’unica novità ufficialmente resa nota dopo l’incontro di San Pietroburgo – oltre al rilascio dell’americano Stephen Hubbard dalle carceri russe – è stata la probabile ripresa il mese prossimo dei contatti trilaterali tra Mosca, Kiev e Washington, ma a livello di tecnici, non ancora certo di leader. Tuttavia, anche il consigliere di Putin per la cooperazione e gli investimenti stranieri, Kirill Dmitriev, che ha partecipato al colloquio, si è detto convinto che ci si stia muovendo “verso una pace a lungo termine che garantirà la sicurezza di Russia, Ucraina ed Europa”. Proprio l’Unione Europea, nelle scorse ore, ha rimarcato che in qualsiasi formato dovesse svolgersi dei nuovi colloqui ritiene di doversi sedere al tavolo.
Di tono opposto i commenti all’incontro di San Pietroburgo da parte di Zelensky, che il giorno prima aveva avuto un colloquio con Witkoff a Oslo insieme a rappresentanti di Paesi europei, compresa l’Italia. Il leader ucraino ha denunciato bombardamenti russi nella notte tra mercoledì e giovedì con l’impiego di 21 missili e oltre 200 droni e un bilancio di almeno due morti e 34 feriti. “Tre ondate di missili balistici sono state lanciate contro Kiev dai ‘compassionevoli’ russi“, ha rincarato Zelensky, ironizzando su quella definizione di ‘compassionevole’ usata da Witkoff per Putin quando l’ha ringraziato per il rilascio di Hubbard.
Zelensky ha affermato che nei raid è stato colpito “persino un monastero”. Il ministero della Difesa si Mosca ha invece rivendicato attacchi solo su obiettivi militari, tra cui uno stabilimento dell’industria aeronautica Antonov dove si assemblano droni e missili da crociera Flamingo, oltre che sul ponte ferroviario e stradale Sud. Mentre sull’altro fronte nel corso della notte 600 droni sono stati lanciati verso Mosca, con la maggior parte neutralizzata dalle forze di difesa aerea nelle zone periferiche, secondo il sindaco, Serghei Sobjanin. Nell’est dell’Ucraina, invece, a causa dei continui bombardamenti russi, è stata decisa l’evacuazione forzata delle famiglie con bambini da tutti gli insediamenti delle comunità di Kramatorsk e Slavyansk, le due cittadine che sono l’obiettivo più ambito delle truppe di Mosca per completare la conquista della regione di Donetsk.
L'articolo Guerra in Ucraina, Putin apre ai negoziati: “Accordo possibile”. Ma intanto i raid continuano proviene da Il Fatto Quotidiano.
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