Ukraine and Poland: Five Principles of Reconciliation

1. The dead have the right to a name and a grave.

Neither side may deny the right to search for, exhume, and give a dignified burial to the victims of the Ukrainian-Polish conflict.

There can be no political reasons why a family should be denied the right to know where a loved one is buried.

Searches, exhumations, identification, and reburials must be conducted in accordance with the laws of both countries, scientific standards, and religious traditions.

2. Every nation has the right to its own historical memory, but this right must be mutual.

Poland has the right to critically assess Ukrainian historical figures and formulate its own vision of the past.

However, this cannot mean the right to ignore the crimes committed by Poles against Ukrainians or the memory of thousands of Ukrainian victims.

Likewise, Ukraine has the right to its own assessment of its historical figures.

At the same time, we must be prepared to speak honestly about the dark sides of the actions of people we consider heroes.

But we must not do so within the framework of Soviet and Russian propaganda myths created to discredit and dehumanize all those who fought for Ukraine’s independence.

We need our own modern, scholarly, and honest perspective on the past.

3. We must remember not only the conflicts but also the alliances.

Today, disputes over the past have almost entirely overshadowed the memory of those moments when Ukrainians and Poles fought side by side.

One of the most important examples is 1920: the Warsaw Agreement between the Ukrainian People’s Republic and Poland, the alliance between Symon Petliura and Józef Piłsudski, and the participation of Ukrainian troops in the war against Bolshevik Russia.

We must not remember only the times when Ukrainians and Poles killed one another.

We must also remember the times when they fought side by side against a common enemy.

4. Ukrainian historical memory must be part of European historical memory.

Russia portrayed its invasion of Ukraine as a supposed fight against “Nazism” and “Banderaism.”

Ukrainians brilliantly dismantled this propaganda narrative.

Self-deprecating terms like “Bandera-m**kal” or “f*cking Bandera supporter” have become a way to mock Russian propaganda and show that modern Ukrainians are a political nation that the Kremlin has failed to divide along ethnic, linguistic, or religious lines.

But our integration into the European historical space requires one more step.

We must highlight not only the heroism of Ukraine’s struggle for freedom, but also Ukraine’s place in European history.

We must remind people of the role Stalin’s Soviet Union played in the outbreak of World War II; of the joint partition of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union; and of the historical roots of modern Russian calls to once again divide Ukraine among neighboring states.

Ukrainian history is part of European history.

5. We need to return to the formula “we forgive and ask for forgiveness.”

This formula has been the foundation of major European reconciliations, first and foremost the Polish-German one.

But to revive it between Ukrainians and Poles, we need to shift the very focus of the historical discourse.

We must shift the focus from heroes to victims; from political disputes to individual names; and from the competition of national truths to the dignity of each individual.

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