December 12, 2017 (http://www.president.gov.ua)
Relations between Poland and Ukraine have deteriorated as the national
narratives of each side collide head-on. Polish President Andrzej Duda’s visit
to Ukraine will go ahead despite an explosion that damaged a Polish tourist
bus, his office announced yesterday. Duda will visit Ukraine as planned
tomorrow "despite various incidents," Pawel Mucha, the deputy head of
the Polish president's chancellery, told Radio Poland, Interfax-Ukraine reports.
No one was injured when an explosive device, described as a grenade by
witnesses, went off under an empty Polish tourist bus near the western city of
Lviv on Saturday. Warsaw and Kyiv both condemned the incident, the Irish Times
reports. “Someone
is trying hard to put us at odds with Poland and disrupt the visit of President
Duda. We will do everything to investigate this incident. And I say to the
provocateurs – you won’t succeed,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavel Klimkin
said. The official reason for President
Duda’s visit to Ukrainian is to discuss with his counterpart President Petro
Poroshenko in Kharkiv the security situation in conflict-torn eastern Ukraine,
but soothing strained bilateral relations is the subtext, the Irish Times says.
Many see the meeting in
Kharkiv between Polish President Duda and Ukrainian President Poroshenko as an
attempt to smooth recently strained relations. Image: Petro Poroshenko/
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Longstanding differences
over massacres of Ukrainian and Polish civilians during World War II have risen
to the surface in the past year, compounded by several incidents of vandalism
at Polish war cemeteries and memorials in Ukraine. Polish Foreign Minister
Witold Waszczykowski recently accused Kyiv of ramping up tension by blocking
the work of a Polish team searching for the remains of Polish war crime
victims. Warsaw retaliated last month by barring entry to the secretary of a
Ukrainian commission for remembrance when he tried to cross the border, Radio
Poland reported. Waszczykowski had earlier said Warsaw was considering barring
Ukrainians with “anti-Polish views” from entering the country.
In the Kharkiv region, Presidents of Ukraine and Poland paid tribute to the victims of the totalitarian regime
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