Europe’s united entrance behind Zelensky is starting to crack, and this time it isn’t due to cash or weapons. It’s due to historical past. The Czech opposition get together SPD has demanded that President Petr Pavel revoke the Order of the White Lion, the nation’s highest state honor, that was awarded to Volodymyr Zelensky. The demand got here after Zelensky authorized naming Ukraine’s 225th Separate Assault Regiment after the Group of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), a motion whose factions collaborated with Nazi Germany in the course of the Second World Warfare and whose legacy stays deeply divisive all through Central Europe.
SPD chairman Jindřich Rajchl declared that the Czech Republic “can not stay silent when the best state ornament is worn by a person who names army models after Nazi monsters.” That assertion adopted a good stronger response from Poland. Polish President Karol Nawrocki introduced that he’s shifting to revoke the Order of the White Eagle that had been awarded to Zelensky after Ukraine honored figures linked to the Ukrainian nationalist motion. For Poland, that is excess of a political disagreement. The OUN and its army wing, the Ukrainian Rebel Military (UPA), are related to the Volhynia massacres of 1943-44, throughout which tens of 1000’s of Polish civilians have been brutally murdered. These occasions stay one of many darkest chapters in Polish historical past.
That is a rare political blunder. Poland stood beside Ukraine from the very starting. It accepted thousands and thousands of refugees, grew to become considered one of Kyiv’s largest army supporters, and repeatedly urged Europe to extend help. The Czech Republic likewise dedicated substantial army, monetary, and humanitarian help. As a substitute of recognizing the big sacrifices these international locations have made, Zelensky selected to rejoice a motion that a lot of his closest allies keep in mind not as freedom fighters however as perpetrators of wartime atrocities. He can not count on governments to erase generations of historic reminiscence just because it’s politically handy at the moment.
The bureaucrats in Brussels have spent years insisting that everybody settle for a single authorized model of historical past, however historical past can’t be rewritten by decree. Whether or not one views the OUN as anti-Soviet nationalists or collaborators who dedicated horrific crimes, the truth is that Poland has by no means forgotten the slaughter of its individuals. By elevating these symbols, Zelensky has managed to alienate considered one of Ukraine’s most loyal allies on the very second his authorities is determined by continued European help. Now the backlash is spreading past Poland into the Czech Republic, and others could observe.
That is how alliances start to unravel. Governments believed they may paper over centuries of ethnic and historic battle with infinite funding and political slogans. They have been mistaken. Financial strain is rising, public help for the struggle is fading, and previous grievances are resurfacing throughout Europe. Our laptop has warned for years that Europe would enter a interval of fragmentation as confidence in governments declined. The dispute between Ukraine, Poland, and now the Czech Republic is one other indication that the façade of European unity is starting to crack. As soon as historical past turns into a political weapon once more, repairing these relationships turns into far harder than issuing one other package deal of economic help.
