While tensions in the Ukrainian-Polish relationship are real, Poland’s Ambassador to Ukraine Jan Pieklo thinks that both nations have so much in common — and so much at stake — that they will weather any rough times.
The current conflict is rooted in the shared and difficult history between the neighboring nations.
Ukraine is blocking Poland’s desire to exhume graves in western Ukraine in search of victims of the Volyn Massacre, in which as many as 100,000 Poles were killed by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in the Nazi Germany-occupied western border area from 1943–1945. Thousands of Ukrainians were also killed by Poles in the cycle of violence and revenge.
“Poland is a Christian country,” Pieklo said during a Kyiv Post interview in the Polish Embassy in Kyiv on Oct. 16. “We believe it’s our obligation to find the graves and pay homage to these people who got killed. And now it is the biggest issue and it is the biggest problem between Poland and Ukraine.
“We do hope it will be solved soon,” he said. “We have no choice.”
To continue feuding over events more than 70 years ago, he said, is to play into the hands of the Kremlin’s “useful idiots,” who he blames for inflaming historical tensions. “There are some marginal groups at work in both countries,” he said. If the Kremlin succeeds, Pieklo said, “we’ll be having the same problems as before.”
Difficult chapters in Polish-Ukrainian history have included war in 1918–1919 during Ukraine’s failed drive for independence, territorial disputes, allegations and counter-allegations of genocide and radical divides over the legacies of such controversial figures as Urainian nationalist Stepan Bandera.
It wasn’t all bad, however.
“After Wold War I, there was a good understanding between the Polish political elites and Ukrainan political elites that the cooperation of our two nations against Bolsheviks is a must,” he said. “With the help of Ukrainian colleagues, we were able to win the Battle of Warsaw in 1920. This battle saved the world from the Red Bolshevization of the rest of Europe.”
High stakes
Despite the political tensions, the people of the two nations — with combined populations of 80 million people — are economically, socially and culturally intertwined.
“Ukraine was and is one of the top priorities of every Polish government,” Pieklo said.
Ukraine seeks to emulate Poland’s successful transformation to a prosperous market economy, joining NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004.
Poland, for its part, needs a strong and democratic Ukraine to keep Russia at bay.
“If nothing very catastrophic will happen in this part of Europe, we will have the democratic country of Ukraine ready to join the European Union and NATO one day,” Pieklo said. “We have no choice. We are neighbors.”
Progress irreversible
Pieklo sees what he calls “the irreversibility” of Ukraine’s democratic reforms, catalyzed by the right of Ukrainians to visa-free travel in most European nations since June 2017.
“It looks like it’s not possible to move back to the old system,” he said.
Ukrainians are traveling freely and working in EU countries, primarily Poland, where nearly 2 million Ukrainians have found jobs and are sending back $4 billion a year back home.
Since the EuroMaidan Revolution that drove President Viktor Yanukovych into Russian exile on Feb. 22, 2014, Pieklo said that the power of Ukraine’s oligarchs have weakened, that fresh activist blood has entered politics and that the outlines of a rule-of-law system are starting to take shape with new institutions as the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and the High Anti-Corruption Court.
“There are still old oligarchs. There is (Dmytro) Firtash, who thanks to God lives in Austria and not in Ukraine. There is (Rinat) Akhmetov and there is (Igor) Kolomoisky. There are others. They also know the rules have been changed and they need to follow these rules.”
Polish model attractive
Since Poland shed its Soviet domination with the Solidarity movement in the 1980s and the transformative reforms in the 1990s, many Western politicians have lectured Ukraine to be more like Poland.
That is no longer the case.
Poland, under the party of Law and Order, abbreviated as PiS, leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski — the ex-prime minister and twin brother of the late President Lech Kaczynski — is seen as a more authoritarian state today.
It has been warned by the EU to stop its politicization of the judiciary, weakening the rule of law. Since Andrzej Duda of the Law and Order party became president, Poland has taken a more nationalistic turn and is criticized for rolling back media freedoms, among other setbacks.
But Pieklo said “the Polish model is still very attractive for Ukraine,” particularly Poland’s successful decentralization of government, which he said reduces corruption.
“We are trying to share our experience related to the transition with our Ukrainian partners,” he said. “Right now, municipalities in Ukraine are receiving more and more funding. Our experience regarding municipal management is very important and very interesting for our Ukrainian partners.”
Ukrainians working in Poland “are learning how to operate in the European Union. They are learning the legislation. They are learning what does it mean to operate, work, study in an EU country. It’s going quite smoothly. It’s beneficial for both — beneficial for Poland because of labor and beneficial to Ukraine because they are sending 3 percent of the Ukrainian gross domestic product back home.”
Ukrainians who return home are setting up businesses and learning how to work to EU standards. He doesn’t expect Ukrainians to stop working in Poland anytime soon.
“They are interested in living, working and studying in Poland because it’s very close to their country,” he said. “Over the weekend they can easily get to the border to visit their families.”
Aside from EU assistance, Poland in 2017 invested $63 million in development projects in Ukraine.
“This figure covers stipends, fellowships for 6,000 students, projects implemented in different parts of Ukraine on good government and entrepreneurship. We are involved in funding some projects for internally displaced persons in Mariupol, Sloviansk and Kramatorsk (in the eastern Donbas war zones.) Through the United Nations Development Program, we are giving small loans to the people who lost their property.”
Steadfast ally
Poland has been a solid ally in other areas, offering military training and taking a hard-line stance against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and other Kremlin atrocities.
But he’s not optimistic that Russia will withdraw from Ukraine soon, saying Russian President Vladimir Putin has turned the Minsk peace agreements into a “dead fish.” He’s concerned that Putin will become more aggressive because of his declining popularity at home, fueled by social unrest over a stagnant economy and pension cutbacks.
Warsaw has also been adamantly opposed to both the Nord Stream 1 and now the Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, which can transport 110 billion cubic meters of natural gas directly from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea — bypassing Ukraine and, for that matter, Poland.
Poland supports tough sanctions against the companies involved in building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which may be completed as early as 2019, and wants the U.S. to export more liquified natural gas as an alternative to Russian energy supplies, which make Europe dependent on the Kremlin.
“Ukraine is receiving gas from Slovakia and through Poland. Partly it’s also Russian gas, but it’s coming from Europe, so it makes a big difference,” he said.
Language law
While the Polish language is strong in Poland, Pieklo is skeptical of Ukrainian lawmakers’ attempts to strengthen the Ukrainian language through punitive measures such as requiring all media in other languages, including Russian and English, to publish in print and online accompanying Ukrainian versions.
“Ukrainian is a beautiful language. They do not need to use the punitive measures to promote the language. It usually works against the goal. We fully understand the Russification of the Ukrainians under czarist empire and then by the Bolsheviks… (but) it can be also case that the real Ukrainian patriots are speaking Russian.”
Tough road ahead
Ukraine’s move to the West is coming at a bad time, with the EU facing internal dissent. The 28-nation bloc’s troubles “makes some things much more difficult for the Ukrainians to accomplish,” he said. “There is also this burden of corruption, which was inherited from the Soviet system.
Unfortunately, when privatization was done in Ukraine, it was done in a very wrong manner, with industries given to the colleagues of the local elite. It is very difficult to reverse this trend and to change the status quo.”
The West needs “to help Ukrainians to strengthen their law enforcement rule of law and their institutions,” he said. “Together with our allies from the U.S., from Canada, from Britain, from the EU, we need to be strong on these issues and we need to push and put pressure on the Ukrainians to fulfill these obligations.”
Like the Polish president and many Poles, Pieklo, 65, is pro-American, believing in the importance of U.S. troops on Polish soil to ward off the Kremlin and strengthen his nation’s defenses.
His positive impressions were solidified during the former journalist’s studies at the University of Missouri in Columbia and his six-month stint in 1991 at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in Texas. His editors assigned him to write a weekly column about his perceptions of Texas.
“It was a very popular column. I was receiving plenty of phone calls and invitations from different people, including the KKK (Ku Klux Klan), who wanted to invite me and believed if I wrote about their issues in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, it would be beneficial to them.”
He even picked up a Texan southern drawl accent. That’s disappeared, but the good memories remain.
“I still have lot of friends there and it was a fantastic experience,” he said. “It was a lot of fun.”
