A diplomatic tension between Ukraine and Poland has deepened as Polish authorities denied entry to the secretary of Ukraine’s commemoration commission of war victims Svyatoslav Sheremet. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine summoned Polish ambassador Jan Pieklo.
Sheremet was not allowed into Poland on Nov. 18 despite having a Schengen visa.
Polish media reported that he was blacklisted in response to the ban on the search and exhumation of Poles killed on the territory of Ukraine during World War II.
The ban was imposed by Kyiv in April, allegedly after a monument to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) had been vandalized in Polish village of Hruszowice.
A day earlier, foreign policy advisors to the presidents of Ukraine and Poland met in Krakow. Ukrainian officials agreed to lift the ban on exhumation works.
Foreign Ministry of Ukraine released a statement saying that barring Sheremet from entering Poland contradicts the agreement reached on Nov. 17 at a meeting in Krakow.
Visiting Lviv in the beginning of November, Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said his country wouldn’t tolerate anti-Polish sentiment and warned that it would ban Ukrainian officials from entering Poland if Polish experts weren’t allowed to continue exhumation works in Ukraine.
“We’ve come to the conclusion that Ukraine is a bit cavalier about this issue, taking it for granted that we would unconditionally support Ukraine’s security and independence, take its side in the conflict with Russia, and never demand that bilateral issues, for example related to history and schools, be resolved,” the minister said in an interview with the Polish Puls Trojki radio after his visit to Lviv.
Ukraine and Poland have been in a dispute over troubled history for a while.
In 2016 Polish parliament declared the 1940s mass murder of some 100,000 Poles committed by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army “genocide.”
The massacres took place in Nazi-occupied Polish territories of Volyn and eastern Galicia that is now western Ukraine.
Ukraine rejected the term and claimed the killings took place on both sides.
