Poland ‘not in dispute’ with Ukraine, continues to support neighbour's EU bid: FM

Poland does not accept the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region by Russia, Witold Waszczykowski said on Polish Radio 3.

He added, however, that Ukraine “has moved away from some of the arrangements it had made with Poland, and is even backpedaling on them.”

This includes the issue of Ukrainian officials not allowing Polish experts to continue their search and exhumation work in Ukraine, Waszczykowski suggested.

As a result, “after several years of talks and dialogue we have no progress, but even regression," Waszczykowski said.

He added without elaborating that “it is now up to Ukraine” whether it returns to the agreements it had made with Poland.

Waszczykowski also said that a ban on the entry to Poland of some Ukrainian citizens was a response to a Ukrainian ban on the entry of some Polish citizens into Ukraine.

Waszczykowski said earlier this month that officials in Warsaw were planning to ban “individuals with an extremely anti-Polish approach” from entering the country.

Last week a Ukrainian official was prevented from entering Poland amid tensions between Warsaw and Kiev over historical issues.

The Ukrainian foreign ministry urgently called in the Polish ambassador to Kiev over the incident, according to Poland’s PAP news agency.

In late October, a Polish expert said that authorities in Ukraine were blocking work by a team of Poles searching for the remains of Polish victims of wartime crimes in that country.

This included problems that Polish researchers are encountering as they search for the burial sites of Polish victims of the so-called Volhynia Massacre in Ukraine, Prof. Krzysztof Szwagrzyk, deputy head of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), said.

(gs/pk)

Source: IAR