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Polish Leader Warns Ukraine To Stop the Neo-Nazis

February 2017

Jarosław Kaczyński.

By Piotr Drabik from Poland (Jaroslaw Kaczynski Uploaded by Dudek1337) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Fab. 7, 2017 (EIRNS)—The glorification of Stepan Bandera and other Nazi collaborators will prevent Ukraine’s integration with the European Union, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice Party, warned.

In his interview with weekly Do Rzeczy, as reported in RT, Kaczynski said:

"I plainly told President Poroshenko that they won’t make it to Europe with Bandera. It’s absolutely clear to me. We’ve already shown great patience, but everything has its limits,"

he said.

"It’s the case of Ukraine’s specific choice," he continued, referring to the government’s toleration, or even open support, for the neo-nazi organizations which continue to praise and emulate Stepan Bandera, who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.

RT repports that Bandera was leader of the militant arm of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) during the beginning of World War II. He was arrested by the Nazis, but released, and then was the leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) which fought the Polish Armia Krajowa and the Red Army in Western Ukraine.

According to Kaczynski, the Ukrainian nationalists "surpassed the Germans in their brutality against the Poles" in their campaign of ethnic cleansing carried out by Bandera’s UPA in 1943-44.

The 108th anniversary since Bandera’s birth in early January was marked by torch rallies, which went on unhampered by the authorities and gathered thousands of people in Ukrainian capital Kiev and the port city of Odessa, RT said, led by the Right Sector and other far-right groups which also led the Maidan coup in 2014.