Ukrainian Foreign Ministry condemns manipulative statements of Polish presidential candidate about Ukraine

Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has rejected statements made by Polish presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki who claimed that Ukraine should not be a member of NATO or the EU due to unresolved historical issues.

Source: a statement by the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday, 9 January, as reported by European Pravda

Details: The Foreign Ministry dismissed Nawrocki's remarks about Ukraine’s future in the EU and NATO as "biased and manipulative".

Quote: "Such statements indicate that the Polish politician prioritises short-term political considerations over the strategic security interests of his own country, the good-neighbourly relations between Ukraine and Poland and the shared values of freedom, democracy and justice." 

Details: The ministry emphasised that dialogue between Kyiv and Warsaw regarding historical issues is ongoing, while Nawrocki’s statements were "met with applause in the Kremlin".

Quote: "Regardless of the statements made by this Polish politician, the reality is that Ukraine is already de facto and will become de jure part of the Euro-Atlantic family of nations and of the common European security architecture." 

More details: Karol Nawrocki, supported as a presidential candidate by the former ruling party Law and Justice, stated that he does not see Ukraine as a part of "either the EU or NATO".

"A country that cannot answer for a very brutal crime against 120,000 of its neighbours cannot be part of international alliances," Nawrocki declared, referring to disputes over the events in Volhynia in the 1940s.

Background: 

• In late November, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha issued a joint statement addressing the issue of exhumations of victims of the Volyn tragedy.
• [The Volyn (Volhynia) tragedy was a series of events that led to the ethnic cleansing of the Polish and Ukrainian populations in 1943 during World War II. It was part of a long-standing rivalry between Ukrainians and Poles in what is now Ukraine's west. Poland considers the Volyn tragedy a genocide of Poles – ed.]

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