You're reading: Foreign Policy: Ukraine and Poland’s history wars are a gift for Putin

Since 2014, when it began its war against better-equipped and better-funded Russians and their proxies, Ukraine has been in desperate search of heroes to inspire the country. At least one of those national inspirations is now threatening a critical, but increasingly fragile, international relationship when Ukraine can least afford it.

The Ukrainian hero is Stepan Bandera, and the relationship in question is Ukraine’s partnership with Poland. In Ukraine, Bandera is mainly remembered as the founder of nationalist groups that fought the Soviet army in western Ukraine from World War II to the 1950s, when he was in exile and later assassinated by the KGB in Germany.

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