The political scientist assessed Kiev's reaction to the establishment of a memorial date for the victims of the Volyn massacre.

In relations with Poland, Ukraine tried to ignore the issue of the Volyn massacre due to the fact that the current government in the country glorifies the Bandera movement. This was stated on June 6 in an interview with Izvestia by Dmitry Bunevich, adviser to the director of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISS), a political scientist.

He noted that the events of 1943 were of great importance to Poland. The expert recalled that about 100,000 Poles died in the Volyn massacre, and the countries cannot agree on perpetuating their memory, as well as on exhumation.

"Moreover, both Polish right-wing politicians and many centrists also express their disagreement with Kiev's line, which delays exhumation requests, does not intend to apologize for the Volyn massacre, and even more so to stop glorifying Bandera because they carried funds because of this crime. <...>," Bunevich said.

The political scientist added that relations between Kiev and Warsaw, of course, such an event will continue to make more and more tense.

"The reaction of Ukrainians is understandable. In their relations with Poland, they tried to either ignore this issue or avoid it, because there is a deep contradiction here, because the current Ukraine is based on the glorification of the Bandera movement. And for Poles, Bandera is not just an opponent, but the person who killed Polish civilians," the expert emphasized.

He recalled that the author of the bill on granting state status to the day of remembrance of the victims of the "Volyn massacre" was the "Polish Peasant Party". According to the political scientist, the elected president of Poland, the leader of the Law and Justice party, Karol Nawrocki, shares the idea of the need for the country to withdraw from historical disputes.

"I think that Navrotsky will additionally highlight these topics in his work. They are important to him, after all, he is a historian by education, he headed the Institute of National Memory. <...> In principle, the historical memory of Poles very clearly characterizes the Volyn massacre as a national tragedy, which was staged by Bandera," he concluded.

On June 5, the Polish Sejm granted state status to the day of remembrance of the victims of the Volyn massacre in 1943, it was reported on the official page of the lower house of parliament. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine stated that the decision "contradicts the spirit of good-neighborly relations between Ukraine and Poland," "does not contribute to the achievement of mutual understanding and reconciliation."

Prior to that, on June 3, Navrotsky, responding to congratulations from Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky on his victory in the presidential election, reminded his colleague of the unresolved historical issues between the two countries.