Lviv Regional Council declares 2027 the year of the UPA, Shukhevych and Olzhych; IPN and defence minister object

At its plenary session on Tuesday, the Lviv Regional Council declared 2027 the year of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), its commander Roman Shukhevych and the poet and OUN activist Oleh Olzhych; the decision is published on the council’s website. Sviatoslav Sheremeta, a councillor who chairs the culture committee, said: “This is our history, our heroes, and we must honour their memory with dignity.”

The Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) wrote on X that the decision is “a blow to the memory of the victims of the genocide committed on his orders”, called Shukhevych the “architect” of the crime in Volhynia and recalled his service in the Nachtigall battalion; the IPN puts the Polish death toll in Volhynia at around 60 thousand. Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz called the decision “unacceptable” and one deepening divisions, and urged the Ukrainian authorities to distance themselves from it unequivocally.

The decision comes amid a thaw in relations: on Saturday, 17 October, Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Poland for its support and said relations had “really improved”, and on Thursday he met Donald Tusk in Brussels. The dispute over UPA memory already flared up in the summer: on 19 June President Karol Nawrocki stripped Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle, and the next day Zelensky sent the award back to Warsaw by courier.