Sikorski: Poland needs Ukraine’s EU membership so that “the massacre does not happen again”

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski has said that Ukraine’s accession to the European Union is necessary to prevent a repeat of past tragedies.

This was reported by Yevropeyska Pravda.

According to Sikorski, European integration began in the 1950s “as a process between recent enemies” who had been destroying one another. Nevertheless, European leaders had “enough wisdom” to unite countries and prevent a new war. The minister stressed that this historical experience gives him optimism regarding the integration of Poland and Ukraine within the EU.

“European integration is a process of peace, so that the massacre that took place in the past does not happen again,” Sikorski said.

The statement came against the backdrop of a deterioration in Polish-Ukrainian relations. Polish President Karol Nawrocki stripped Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky of the republic’s highest honor — the Order of the White Eagle. The reason was the naming of a Ukrainian Armed Forces brigade after figures from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which carried out the Volhynia massacre — the mass killing of Poles and people of other nationalities.

The position of Polish politicians on the question of Ukraine’s EU membership is far from uniform. In June, Nawrocki said that Ukraine’s EU membership poses a threat to Polish agriculture. Speaker of the Polish Sejm Włodzimierz Czarzasty also stated that Ukraine will not receive Warsaw’s consent to join the EU until it meets Poland’s conditions.

Former Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller wrote that Ukraine’s accession to the EU could make the idea of Poland itself leaving the bloc popular. Russian Foreign Ministry Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik, for his part, expressed the opinion that the conflict between Poland and Ukraine could complicate Kyiv’s EU accession process.