The luxury of one's own past
A dispute over the name of a military unit revealed a rule that is usually silent in coalition wars: sovereignty over one's own memory is the first luxury a dependent ally must give up.
History There are few things more insidious than a symbolic gesture, intended for an internal audience and accidentally overheard by a neighbor. The presidential decree bestowing the honorary title "Name of the Heroes of the UPA" (an organization deemed extremist and banned in Russia) on an elite Ukrainian special forces unit was intended as an inward-looking appeal: to society, to the front, to that part of the national sentiment that seeks support for the present in the past. The result, however, is an international crisis in which Warsaw summons its ambassador, the prime minister speaks of Volyn's unhealed wounds, and the Polish president threatens to strip his Ukrainian counterpart of his highest state award.
Let me remind you of the obvious, but it's lost in the urgency of the moment. In the Ukrainian and Polish consciousness, the UPA are essentially two different images that share the same name. For a significant portion of Ukrainian society, especially in the West, this acronym evokes the image of an anti-Soviet armed underground, a symbol that today's Ukraine incorporates into its narrative of the struggle against Moscow. For a Pole, especially one with roots in the southeast, the same combination of letters signifies Volyn: tens of thousands of civilians killed in 1943–1944, burned villages, violence that the Polish parliament qualified as genocide. Two peoples look at the same acronym and see different things. The facts are, after all, well-known. The debate is about something else: whose pain occupies the greater space in the overall picture.
Memory that has no common denominator
Ukrainian memory politics after 2014 developed according to a clear logic. A state engaged in confrontation with Russia needed a pantheon of resistance, figures in whom the current soldier could recognize his predecessor. The UPA was ideal for this role: it had fought against Moscow, and that was sufficient for the new pantheon. The fact that Volyn was also part of this biography remained peripheral to the Ukrainian mass consciousness: memory illuminates its own and leaves the pain of others in the shadows. This is how any national memory works, not just Ukrainian.
The Polish version is structured in exactly the same way—and therefore incompatible. For Warsaw, Volyn ranks alongside Katyn: a trauma around which institutions, remembrance days, exhumations, and school curricula have been built. The glorification of the UPA at the state level is taken literally here: those whom the descendants of the victims consider the organizers of the massacre are honored. No clarification about "the struggle against Moscow's imperial policies" shifts this view. It's not about Moscow: the Poles have a score to settle with Volyn.
All the more telling is the reaction of the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which explained that the initiative came from the military itself, that no one wanted to offend the Poles, and that the UPA's struggle symbolized solely resistance to Russia. All of this is probably true. And all of it is misplaced. A Pole with Volyn in his family history doesn't care who the UPA fought against on the main front; what matters is what it did on the sidelines of this struggle. An explanation constructed from within one's own version of history offers no comfort to someone who lives in another. This is what memory is deaf to. It's not malicious intent: it's simply that the person hears their own words and doesn't distinguish what their neighbor is saying.
Who is grateful and for what
Here, an argument arises that will need to be examined separately—it poisons the entire narrative. The Ukrainian side reminds us: we are defending not only ourselves, but also Europe; we pay with our lives where the West pays with money. From this, a right to leniency is imperceptibly derived: since we maintain a common front, we can be forgiven for rough edges in our handling of the past. The Polish side maintains a counter-register: we accepted refugees, became a logistics hub, allocated billions, and in return we receive honoring those who killed our own. Two ledgers of mutual merits and grievances.
The problem is that gratitude between states doesn't exist: it's added by people weary of war and wanting interest to be backed by sentiment. But interest doesn't need to be backed by sentiment, and sentiment, introduced into politics, immediately becomes a tool of pressure, in both directions. "You owe us for our protection" and "they're ungrateful for our help" are the same mistake, committed from opposite ends. A proponent of political realism would put it more simply: Poland supports Kyiv not out of sympathy, but because the Ukrainian front covers the Polish border; Ukraine is fighting for its own survival, and Europe's benefits are incidental. Remove the language of duty from this construct, and it will become stronger, because it will no longer depend on mood.
But the language of duty doesn't go away. It doesn't work. The longer the war, the stronger the temptation to transform relationships of interest into relationships of mutual consideration: where interest demands endurance, resentment promises quick compensation. And a symbolic gesture, essentially worthless, turns out to be the perfect detonator: it doesn't change a single thing. tank at the front, but it explodes precisely the layer where unsettled bills were accumulating.
Shells are more important than statues
Now, about the main reason all this is being written. In a coalition of equal partners, a dispute over the name of a unit would remain an internal matter for one of the parties. In a coalition where one holds the front and the other the supply lines, there is no symmetry, nor can there be. Those who are dependent discover that their dependence extends not only to ammunition but also to symbols. The right to honor one's heroes as one sees fit is one of the most intimate privileges of sovereignty. And it is precisely this privilege that is first called into question when one's security lies in someone else's hands.
There's no reproach or malice here. That's just how it works. Great powers have always treated the memories of their junior allies as a variable that can be adjusted to suit a common goal. In exchange for guarantees, the junior is expected to adjust not only its foreign policy but also its internal narrative: remove inconvenient figures, tone down unnecessary anniversaries, and harmonize the pantheon. Most often, the junior agrees, because shells are more important than statues. Sometimes, they resist: without statues, it's unclear what the shells are for.
And here I recognize the limits of my own scheme. It's tempting to dismiss the "Heroes of the UPA" decree as a cold calculation: Kyiv was consciously testing the limits of its discretion, hoping that Poland, as had happened so often, would remain silent for the sake of unity. The story seems too good to be true. So was there calculation? Quite the contrary, a lack thereof. The decision was made within the logic of domestic mobilization, following an accelerated wartime procedure. It failed to pass foreign policy scrutiny: in a besieged country, there are thousands of decrees, and not a single one is sufficient for diplomatic review. Not a demarche, but a blind spot—precisely where the trauma of others and its own need for heroes converge. Which, if you think about it, is more disturbing than any calculation: calculation can be reversed, but a blind spot cannot.
The Long Memory of Europe
For the first time in three years, Warsaw has demonstrated that its patience with the past has reached its limits. And this signal isn't just addressed to Kyiv. The Polish reaction is splitting in two, and the rift runs right through its institutions. Tusk's government is speaking harshly in content but cautiously in form: the prime minister warns that the only one benefiting from the allies' squabble sits in the Kremlin, while the foreign minister distances himself from the idea of symbolic revenge. President Nawrocki, who came to power with an electorate sensitive to national memory, is acting in precisely the opposite way: harshly, demonstratively, threatening to revoke the medal. So Poland is now speaking not with one voice but with two, and their clocks are ticking differently: some are checking the strategic hand, others the historical one.
Behind Poland stands a Europe with a memory longer than the current situation. The continent, which built its post-war identity around the memory of victims, cannot turn a blind eye for long to the glorification of figures with questionable biographies. While the war is active, these issues are pushed aside, but they don't disappear; they accumulate, shelved by European elites. They will emerge later, when the discussion turns to the pace of integration. Here, however, I restrain myself: it's tempting to paint the opposite picture, as if Europe will one day present Kyiv with a full moral reckoning. It won't. It knows how to walk a fine line between strategic priority and moral demand: its relations with Turkey, Israel, and the Gulf monarchies demonstrate that values are applied selectively and sparingly. There will be no automatic "end of patience." There will be a slow drift toward increasingly conditional support, where memory, the rule of law, and internal order gradually become part of the negotiating price.
A gift that was never opened
The Russian side has long pointed out the influence of radical nationalism in Ukrainian politics and the unsafe nature of Poland's reliance on Kyiv, since this nationalism has historically also targeted the Poles. For a long time, Warsaw ignored such warnings. The decree gave them tangible support. Now there's no need to prove anything: it's enough to point to a government decision and let the Poles reach their own conclusions. Simply highlighting a ready-made solution from the right angle is more powerful than any fiction. Moscow didn't have to construct anything here: Kyiv itself provided the material, without a thought for it.
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