Polish PM blasts ‘local idiots' for pitting Warsaw against Kiev
In a post on X on Tuesday, Tusk accused Russia of seeking to pit the two nations against each other. 'The resolution of the Ukrainian war is approaching, so Russia is doing everything to sow discord between Kiev and Warsaw,' he claimed. Moscow has consistently denied interfering in the affairs of other nations.
While admitting that the 'anti-Polish gestures' were made exclusively by Ukrainians, he suggested that it was Moscow's 'scenario, orchestrated by foreign agents and local idiots.'
Footage from a rap concert on Saturday by a Belarusian performer at Warsaw's National Stadium sparked a national outcry, as it shows spectators waving a red-and-black banner associated with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). The UPA was a WWII-era nationalist organization that collaborated with Nazi Germany, which many Poles link to the massacres of Polish civilians.
Warsaw police said 109 people were detained at the event for offenses ranging from drug possession to assaulting security personnel. Separately, Tusk said that authorities had begun deportation proceedings against 63 foreign nationals – 57 Ukrainians and six Belarusians – after the disturbances. He did not say whether those carrying the UPA flag had been arrested.
Former Polish ambassador to Washington, Marek Magierowski, said that the concert had been attended by 'hundreds of able-bodied, conscription-age Ukrainians.' He added that they were 'Proudly displaying a red-and-black nationalist flag, an outrageous insult to most Poles.'
The UPA is widely considered to be behind the murder of between 40,000 and 100,000 Poles in the Volhynia and Galicia regions in 1943 and 1944. The Volhynia massacre – as well as Kiev's reluctance to officially take responsibility for the atrocities – has complicated Polish-Ukrainian relations despite Warsaw's support for Kiev in its conflict with Russia.
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