Poland and Ukraine condemn “illegal occupation” of Crimea and call for closer cooperation

The presidents of Poland and Ukraine have signed a joint declaration condemning the occupation of Crimea, promoting economic cooperation between Warsaw and Kyiv, and seeking to calm tensions over Second World War history between the two neighbours.

The document – signed during Polish president Andrzej Duda’s visit to Kyiv at a ceremony alongside his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky – “calls for an end to the illegal occupation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea”, which was annexed by Russia in 2014.

The Polish side “reaffirms its support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” and “expresses its interest in cooperating with Ukraine within the framework of an international platform for the de-occupation of Crimea”. The Ukrainian government called for the creation of such a platform in June this year.

The situation in neighbouring Belarus was not mentioned explicitly in the declaration, but Poland and Ukraine wrote that they “emphasise the right of citizens of all countries to decide about their future as a result of democratic elections”.

The Polish government has expressed strong support for the Belarusian opposition, and called for August’s presidential election – at which Alexander Lukashenko claimed victory amid widespread evidence of vote rigging – to be voided and held again under democratic conditions.

Today’s declaration also covered issues that have caused tension between Poland and Ukraine, in particular those relating to the Second World War and commemoration of it.

The two presidents said that they “recognise the important need to honour the innocent victims of the conflicts and political repressions of the 20th century”.

This includes “ensuring the possibility of searching for and exhuming these victims in Ukraine and Poland in order to atone for their memory, in the spirit of respect for historical truth”.

Authorities in Ukraine have in the past blocked exhumations of ethnic Poles on their territory, including victims of the Volhynia massacres carried out by Ukrainian nationalists during the war. Following his election last year, Zelensky moved to allow exhumations to resume.

During his current three-day visit to Ukraine, Duda also paid tribute to both Polish and Ukrainian victims of communism. This morning, he placed a basket at a monument to victims of the Holodomor, the Soviet-era famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in 1932-33.

Yesterday, the Polish president and his wife, Agata Kornhauser-Duda, attended a ceremony at the Polish Military Cemetery in Bykivnia near Kyiv to commemorate victims of the 1940 Katyn massacre, during which the Soviets executed around 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligentsia.

Duda said that it was “thanks to the kindness of the Ukrainian authorities” he was able to “stand on this land of blood” and commemorate the “bestial genocidal murder that the Soviets committed against Polish officers in Katyn, in Kharkiv and here in Bykivnia”.

In today’s statement, Duda and Zelensky also “condemned acts of vandalism against Polish cultural monuments and memorials in Ukraine, as well as against Ukrainian cultural monuments and memorials in Poland”.

Such sites have been targets for attacks. In 2018, a man was arrested in Ukraine for setting off a bomb at a Polish memorial. In March this year, the Association of Ukrainians in Poland said that around a dozen Ukrainian memorials or graves in Poland had been vandalised since 2014.

Sites commemorating the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which was responsible for the Volhynia massacres, have been a particular target for attacks.

In today’s statement, the two presidents also expressed their support for “protecting the rights of national minorities”. Ukraine is home to many ethnic Poles, while Poland’s Ukrainian population has risen to over a million in recent years amid record levels of migration.

Finally, the statement also expressed “the readiness of both countries to cooperate in order to further deepen Ukraine’s relations with the European Union” and to support its “Euro-Atlantic aspirations…of reforming the security and defence sector in line with NATO standards”.

As part of this process, they called for deeper economic cooperation and mutual investment between Poland and Ukraine, including working together to diversify energy sources.

Today, in the presence of the two presidents, Polish state-owned oil-and-gas firm PGNiG signed an agreement with Ukraine’s State Property Fund that could facilitate future participation in privatisation of the Ukrainian energy sector.

Tomorrow, Duda and Zelensky will attend the opening of a business forum in Odessa on “Perspectives for cooperation between Poland and Ukraine: implementation of joint initiatives and projects in the field of transport and energy”.

After the signing, Duda hailed the declaration as showing that on “the most important issues, from economic through political, security and historical matters” the two countries are “deepening ties”, reports the Polish Press Agency (PAP).

Main image credit: prezydent.pl

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.