Еwo new plaques dedicated to the defenders of Polish settlements in Volhynia and southeastern Małopolska will be unveiled in the coming days at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw, the State Secretary in the Ministry of National Defence of Poland Michal Dworczyk said on Wednesday, 8 November.
"The plaques are installed on the initiative of the Minister of National Defence Antoni Macierewicz. In particular, they perpetuate the soldiers who defended local Polish communities from Ukrainian nationalists from the OUN-UPA," Dworczyk said as quoted by Polish Radio.
Plaques are dedicated to the events in a few villages in Eastern Halychyna in 1944-1946.
Last year, Warsaw unveiled a memorial sign on one of the pillars of the memorial dedicated to the so-called Cursed soldiers.
The head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, Volodymyr Vyatrovych, was outraged the installation of commemorative plaques.
"At the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw (the place of mandatory attendance by international delegations), a plaque appeared commemorating the Polish soldiers who died in the struggle against the Ukrainian Insurgents. Most of those who died in the fight against the Ukrainian insurgents on the territory of Poland, were members of communist security forces. Looks like Poland on the state level will honour security officers, in particular those who had blood of Polish patriots on their hands," Vyatrovych wrote on Facebook.
In recent weeks, Polish authorities made a series of verbal attacks against Ukraine over the interpretation of historical issues.
Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski has threatened to create a list of Ukrainians with "anti-Polish attitude" that will be banned from entering Poland. He said the ban list will include Ukrainian officials who "at the administrative level, for political reasons, hamper the continuation of exhumations and the restoration of the Polish places of memory."
President Andrzej Duda urged the Ukrainian leadership not to appoint people with "anti-Polish views" to high posts.
Poland, in particular, is dissatisfied by the moratorium on the exhumation of Poles in Ukraine, which was initiated by the Institute of National Remembrance in late April in response to the dismantling of a monument commemorating UPA in the village of Hruszowice in eastern Poland.
Prior to this, several Ukrainian monuments were desecrated in Poland. The perpetrators were never punishment.