Polish-Ukrainian relations

 "Polish-Ukrainian relations were also complicated during the interwar period, when a very large minority of Ukrainians set the goal of creating their own state, which in itself is not bad, but the problem is that, including the support of foreign countries hostile to Poland, Ukrainian forces arose dreaming that an independent Ukraine at any price would become an ethnically homogenous state. In no secret, there were calls to expel or kill foreigners. It was hammered into the heads of Ukrainian integralists that no crime is too terrible, as long as it serves Ukraine.

 

 Some units of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) associated with the nationalist movement OUN-B began to implement this ideology during the war years, specifically in the Volyn Voivodeship, where before the war Poles made up about 15% of the population. They became the target. It is necessary to emphasize that only a part of the UPA soldiers encouraged and carried out the killings, but the fact is that the genocide took place.

 According to various estimates, they killed 120 - 200 thousand Polish civilians.

 By the way, they killed not only Poles, but also Jews, Armenians, representatives of other nations and even Ukrainians who did not support the killings. Admittedly, the Poles responded in kind, only on a smaller scale and without genocidal aims.

 

 There was and is a mass of people in Poland whose relatives and friends were massacred in Volyn."