Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz on Friday said he felt that Poland and Ukraine would manage to find solutions to problems rooted in history that were still the cause of tensions in bilateral relations today.
KIEV (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 07th September, 2018) Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz on Friday said he felt that Poland and Ukraine would manage to find solutions to problems rooted in history that were still the cause of tensions in bilateral relations today.
"We would like to find a solution to these problems, one of which is the exhumation of Poles killed on Ukrainian territory during World War II, for which we do not have consent [from Ukraine]. I would like us to settle these problems, so that we could calmly discuss the complex historical problems of our two countries," Czaputowicz said in an interview for the Ukrinform news agency.
Czaputowicz said that it took time to resolve long-standing problems.
"There are certain issues related to common history and its interpretation. We need some time," he added.
According to the minister, he still considers geopolitical cooperation with Ukraine successful.
Relations between the neighboring countries have become tense in recent years over historical issues, with Warsaw condemning Kiev's stance on the glorification of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists - the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (OUN-UPA, an extremist organization banned in Russia) and criticizing the regular acts of vandalism against Polish memorials in Ukraine.
In February, Polish President Andrzej Duda signed into law a bill criminalizing propaganda of Ukrainian nationalist ideology, the denial of the massacres in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia that happened during World War II, and statements on Poles' complicity in the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes. Kiev has slammed the law as targeted against the Ukrainian people.
