Volodymyr Zelenskyy to skip postwar conference amid tensions with Poland

Volodymyr Zelenskyy named a military unit after the UPA, a partisan formation seen as a symbol of Ukrainian resistance, which killed up to 100,000 Polish people in Volhynia. Photograph: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP View image in fullscreen Volodymyr Zelenskyy named a military unit after the UPA, a partisan formation seen as a symbol of Ukrainian resistance, which killed up to 100,000 Polish people in Volhynia. Photograph: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP Volodymyr Zelenskyy to skip postwar conference amid tensions with Poland Ukraine’s president will not attend after sparking Polish ‘outrage’ over naming of military unit Europe live – latest updates Volodymyr Zelenskyy will skip a high-level conference on the postwar reconstruction of Ukraine amid a deepening rift with Poland over his naming of a military unit for one that killed tens of thousands of Poles during the second world war. Ukraine’s president had been expected to co-host the Ukraine Recovery Conference, which begins in the Polish coastal city of Gdańsk on Thursday, but the Ukrainian delegation will instead be led by the prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko. The annual conference, which in previous years took place in Rome, Berlin and London, seeks to bring together partners and businesses that could help with rebuilding Ukraine after the war. Zelenskyy’s decision not to attend follows weeks of tensions with Poland over his decision last month to name a military unit after “the heroes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army,” the UPA. The partisan formation is seen in Ukraine as a symbol of heroic resistance against the Soviet forces in the fight for Ukrainian independence. In Poland, however, the UPA is notorious for killing up to 100,000 Poles in the Volhynia region between 1943 and 45, in an attempt to ensure the territory did not become part of postwar Poland. The area has changed hands numerous times and now lies in Ukraine, after it suffered Soviet and then German Nazi occupation. In 2016, the Polish parliament unanimously adopted a motion calling the killings a “genocide committed by Ukrainian nationalists”. Polish underground forces went on to kill 10,000 Ukrainians in reprisals, historians say. The episode remains one of the most painful and unresolved issues in bilateral relations between the countries. Zelenskyy’s decision sparked anger in Poland and accusations of historical insensitivity, dampening hopes of a breakthrough after last year’s agreement on exhumations , in which Ukraine agreed to first steps that could ultimately allow Polish families to bury their massacred relatives. The conservative President Karol Nawrocki – a former head of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance – said he was “outraged” by Zelenskyy’s decision to name the unit after UPA, suggesting Zelenskyy could be stripped of Poland’s highest civilian honour, the Order of the White Eagle, which was conferred on him in 2023. After weeks of frantic behind-the-scenes discussions between Warsaw and Kyiv, no compromise was found on th