{"id":6719,"date":"2026-06-06T11:10:48","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T11:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/?p=6719"},"modified":"2026-06-12T13:48:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T13:48:21","slug":"ukraines-backer-blasts-zelensky-over-tribute-to-nazi-collaborators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/06\/ukraines-backer-blasts-zelensky-over-tribute-to-nazi-collaborators\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine\u2019s backer blasts Zelensky over tribute to Nazi collaborators"},"content":{"rendered":"

Polish PM Donald Tusk has called for a hard business line instead of empathy after the Ukrainian leader honored nationalist figures blamed for massacres of Poles<\/strong><\/p>\n

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has warned that Warsaw\u2019s support for Kiev could become increasingly driven by hard national interests. The criticism follows Zelensky\u2019s move to honor World War II-era Ukrainian nationalist paramilitaries responsible for massacres of Poles and Jews by naming a commando unit after them.<\/p>\n

In May, Zelensky decreed<\/a> that the Special Operations Center North would bear the honorary title \u2018Heroes of the UPA,\u2019 referring to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the armed wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).<\/p>\n

The OUN sought to establish an ethnically and religiously homogeneous Ukrainian state and collaborated with Nazi Germany during the early stages of the invasion of the Soviet Union. The UPA was formed in 1942 following a split between much of the OUN leadership and the Germans.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian nationalists killed an estimated 100,000 Polish civilians in what is now western Ukraine from 1943-44. The massacres remain a major source of tension between Warsaw and Kiev.<\/p>\n

\n Read more<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n \"RT
\u2018Poles, Russians, and Jews must be exterminated\u2019: The bloody history of Zelensky\u2019s heroes (DISTURBING CONTENT)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cPerhaps these arguments will reach Kiev,\u201d<\/em> Tusk said on Friday as cited by RMF24. \u201cIf not, it will mean that not empathy, but hard business interests will determine our relations.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The PM noted that \u201call responsibility lies with the Ukrainian side to somehow heal this completely unnecessary conflict over historical interpretations.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

While Kiev has promoted the legacy of the UPA and Ukrainian Nazi collaborators as part of state historical policy for years, the latest move has sparked an unusually fierce reaction in Poland.<\/p>\n

President Karol Nawrocki has called for Zelensky to be stripped of the Order of the White Eagle, the country\u2019s highest state distinction, highlighting that a nation honoring \u201cbandits and murderers\u201d<\/em> is not yet fit to join \u201cthe European family.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Earlier in May, the Ukrainian authorities rolled out<\/a> full state honors for the remains of Andrey Melnik, the leader of the OUN, and his wife, Sofia Fedak-Melnik. Exhumed in Luxembourg, the couple was reburied in Kiev\u2019s main military cemetery. At the same time, the Ukrainian authorities announced plans to rebury Evgeny Konovalets, one of the founders of the, whose remains will be transferred from Rotterdam, the Netherlands.<\/p>\n

\n Read more<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n \"Polish
Polish president wants Zelensky stripped of top state honor<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The controversial steps came around a month after Vladimir Zelensky announced plans to establish a \u201cpantheon of outstanding Ukrainians.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Commenting on Kiev\u2019s latest steps, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the current Ukrainian leader is Jewish by nationality, and suggested that his grandfather, who fought against Nazism during WWII, \u201cis probably turning in his grave.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has highlighted that, had Andrey Melnik and his OUN followers triumphed, Zelensky\u2019s grandfather would have perished in a Nazi gas chamber, and that the current Ukrainian leader himself would never have been born.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Polish PM Donald Tusk has called for a hard business line instead of empathy after the Ukrainian leader honored nationalist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6719"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6719"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6723,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6719\/revisions\/6723"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.youtubexyoutube.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}