On day commemorating victims of Volyn tragedy, Nawrocki called for ban on OUN-UPA flag in Poland
On the day commemorating the victims of the Volyn tragedy, the President of Poland, Karol Nawrocki, called for a legislative ban on the red-and-black flag of the OUN-UPA in Poland.
He made these remarks during events commemorating the Volhynia tragedy in the village of Radruzh, near the border with Ukraine, according to RMF24, as reported by Censor.NET.
Call for a ban
Nawrocki emphasised that the use of the UPA’s red-and-black flag in Poland is unacceptable.
"We do not want to see it in Poland – and I will do everything to ensure that it is not present in Poland. I believe that the Polish parliament will pass the relevant law – because it is the same as the Blut und Boden flag ("Blood and Soil", of the German Nazis – ed.). That is what he meant, and behind it lay – and still lies – the entire ideology of the Ukrainian nationalists who murdered Polish women and children," said the President of Poland.
He pointed out that the Poles "do not blame the entire Ukrainian people, but rather the Bandera ideology, those who carried out the killings, and those who are once again invoking the red-and-black flag in the 21st century".
"This is unacceptable, because glorifying genocide or turning a blind eye to it is an invitation to a new genocide," said the Polish leader.
Parallels with a full-scale war by the Russian Federation
Furthermore, during his speech, Nawrocki compared the victims of the Volyn tragedy with Ukrainians who have fallen victim to the war that Russia launched against Ukraine.
"Whenever people talk about modern geopolitics, about a world at war, or about the logic of the state, I would like to remind them that the death of 14-year-old Jadwiga Romanik – in terms of her own suffering, what her parents went through, and what she felt in her heart when she was killed by Ukrainian nationalists – is the very same death that 14-year-old Ukrainians are experiencing today at the hands of Russian gangsters," said the President of Poland.
For reference:
Blut und Boden (German for ‘blood and soil’) is a component of the ideology of German National Socialism (Nazism), which asserts that membership of a nation is determined by ancestry (blood) and attachment to one’s native land (soil), which allegedly entitles a people to living space.
Historical facts do not support a link between the OUN’s red-and-black flag and this aspect of Nazi ideology, nor do they support the claim that it originated from it.
