The Cult of Banderism: The UPA and Poland-Ukraine Relations

Whatever the high-minded rhetoric and spirited calls to guarding civilisation against oriental barbarism, the ongoing support and funding of Ukraine in its military struggle with Russia, is becoming a less than harmonious one. A hard sceptic of the Kyiv Appreciation Society in the form of Hungary’s former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán may have been vanquished in recent domestic elections, but European doubters did not dissipate with his defeat. Most telling of all is the increasingly fractious relationship between Poland and Ukraine, countries awkwardly, even tenuously aligned in their grievances against Russia.

Initial solidarity for Ukraine’s cause in Poland following the February 2022 Russian invasion was palpable. But problems were to come. Poland hosts nearly 1 million Ukrainian refugees, currently comprising 2.5% of its population, a demographic jolt to accompany the pre-war presence of some 1.3-1.5 million Ukrainian migrant workers and long-term residents. Despite figures showing the successful employ of roughly 69% of working age Ukrainians and the enrolment of 200,000 Ukrainian children in Polish schools, the competition of resources has become a source of agitation and comment.

The 2025 presidential candidate from the right-wing Konfederacja (Confederation) party, Słowmir Mentzen, is not one to shy away from overt criticism of Ukrainian refugees and Polish support for Kyiv. On a visit to Lviv on the anniversary of Russia’s invasion last year, Mentzen took the opportunity, along with Confederation party MEP Anna Bryłka, to record a video in front of a monument to the notorious, sketchy Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist figure of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) responsible, if not an inspiration, for his fair share of butcheries in the Ukrainian independence cause. He first came to prominence with the assassination of Polish Minister of the Interior, Bronisław Pieracki in 1934. With his death sentence commuted, Bandera languished in a Polish cell till his escape in September 1939. With the German invasion, he hoped to assume the mantle of a future Prowidnyk (leader) of the movement that would align itself, where convenient, with Nazi Germany’s war aims.

The Germans thought his nationalistic aspirations a fine nuisance, arresting him in the summer of 1941 after the Lviv proclamation of a Ukrainian state. But prior to being apprehended, he had authored, along with such deputies as Stepan Lenkavskyi and Stepan Shukhevych, a text outlining the activities of the OUN in wartime. Ukrainian territory, the ominous warning came, would be cleansed of “Muscovites, Poles, and Jews”, with a special animus directed at defenders of the Soviet Union. Ironically enough, from his journey as a political prisoner in Sachsenhausen concentration camp to his eventual move to Munich, where he was murdered in 1959 under directions from Moscow, Bandera exercised an outsized influence on the OUN, a point that did not go unremarked by such rivals as Lev Rebet. His supporters, however, were more than willing to kill in his reverenced name. Many of them would in time swell the ranks of the future UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army), adding to the bloodied ledger in such areas as Volhynia and Galicia. The number of slaughtered Poles during this sanguinary venture between 1943-45 was somewhere in the order of 100,000. Historian Jaroslav Hryzak reminds us of the expansive list of targets the UPA relished: red partisans, the Polish underground army, other Ukrainian nationalists and units of the German army initially seen as allies.

Such heavy résumés are hard to cast aside. Russian President Vladimir Putin has regularly made mention of what he calls the “Banderites” in justifying Moscow’s martial efforts. Mentzen was also one drawing on this particular well of history. Bandera was “a terrorist who was sentenced to death by a Polish court for killing Poles during the Second Polish Republic”. He then “founded the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, which was responsible for the massacres in Volyn. The man’s people killed 100,000 Poles.”

The shadow cast by the activities of the UPA is a long one. While the organisation has been feted for its anti-Soviet, and anti-Russian credentials in Ukraine, notably since 2014, the army’s enthusiastically murderous activities against Polish civilians during the Second World War have retained their barbs in the Warsaw-Kyiv relationship. The decree in May by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to name a military unit after “the heroes of the UPA” in order to “restore the historical traditions of the national army” might have stirred local patriots, but on the international front, it was cloddish.

An offended Polish President Karol Nawrocki was less than impressed with the gesture, announcing plans to strip Zelensky of Poland’s highest honour, the Order of the White Eagle. (The decision was formalised on June 19.) His remarks were bruising, suggesting that Kyiv remained insufficiently mature on historical matters to be admitted to the European family. This may have been stretching matters, given that families are meshed units of bickering, disagreement and occasional violence. “Unfortunately, President Zelensky has shown that Ukraine, in terms of mentality – glorifying bandits, murderers from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) – is not ready to be part of the European family.” In such a family “you cannot glorify bandits [who] murdered women and children, murdered Poles.” The deputy leader of the national-conservative Law and Justice (Pis) party, Przemysław Czarnek, waspishly described the decision as “a shameful signal sent to Polish society,” nothing less than “a demonstration of shameful ingratitude” to one of Kyiv’s strongest supporters against Russian invasion. Ukrainian “elites” still sought “to build their national identity on the cult of Banderism.”

Zelensky has now returned the Order via post, making a fuss of the affair with photographic evidence of the gesture accompanied by statement. “Ukraine will remain open to all meaningful formats of engagement with Poland in order to try to avoid conflicting interpretations of the difficult and painful chapters of our shared past and to ensure proper respect for all innocent victims of the 20^th century.” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, Ukrainian Ambassador to Poland Vasyl Bodnar and the Head of the President’s Office Kyrylo Budanov, showed official fealty in announcing the return of their Polish awards. Budanov’s renunciation of Poland’s Gold Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit was crowned with a catty observation: “What kind of justice can there be if the Order of the White Eagle has still not been stripped, for example, from the Italian fascist dictator and Hitler’s accomplice Benito Mussolini?” Granting state awards are fickle affairs.

Voices favouring a united European front against Russia have been perturbed by these historical squabbles. Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk offered that old refrain: such disagreements troubled the allies and delighted Putin. But they show how solidarity between nation states is a contrivance of convenience, vulnerable to the revival of dark memories susceptible to deft, and sometimes cynical exploitation. Nationalism, especially of the sanguineous sort, is thicker than cooperative harmony.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: [email protected]