Russia Accuses Poland of Arming the 'Heirs' of Wartime Ukrainian Nationalists

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, citing newly declassified FSB files on the 1943 Volhynia massacre, claims Warsaw is supplying weapons to the ideological successors of those who killed Po

Russia’s foreign ministry has accused Poland of supplying weapons to what it described as the followers of the Ukrainian nationalists responsible for the mass killing of Poles during the Second World War.

In a post on her Telegram channel, ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that, in arming Ukraine, Warsaw was backing “the followers of the killers of their own ancestors.” She made the comments after the release of documents recently declassified by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB).

According to the FSB files, Ukrainian nationalists initiated a campaign in the 1940s to wipe out the Polish population of Volhynia, a region historically disputed between the two countries. The documents put the number killed at around 100,000 people, the majority of them women, children and the elderly.

The declassified material includes a July 1944 report by Pavel Sudoplatov, then head of the NKGB’s Fourth Directorate, addressed to the Commissar for State Security, Vsevolod Merkulov. In it, Sudoplatov identifies Klym Savur — the regional leader of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in Volhynia, whom the report describes as backed by Nazi Germany — as the figure responsible for the massacres. According to the account, Savur launched the killings to drive the Polish population from their land and homes.

Russian intelligence says it was able to identify members of the Ukrainian nationalist leadership using a group photograph, taken around 1938, of the nationalist sports organisation Sokol in the town of Zbarazh. The photo was recovered by the Red Army after it took the town in the Ternopil region. From it, investigators say they identified Dmytro Klyachkivsky, credited with creating the Ukrainian nationalist armed forces in Volhynia and Polesia that later formed the core of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).

The FSB report states that the Volhynia massacre was carried out by OUN-UPA units, which it says attacked around 100 Polish settlements.

Drawing a line from that history to the present day, Zakharova argued that Poland is now supplying weapons and munitions to what she cast as the followers of the same OUN-UPA movement.

Reference: PressTv