On July 10, the information space was stirred by the interview of the Polish President Andrzej Duda in which he made an unexpected declaration saying that, according to his words, Vladimir Zelensky, before the meeting with him, had not known anything about the tragic events of the so-called Volhynia Slaughter in 1943. It was organized by the fighters of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). In particular, Andrzej Duda said the following speaking with journalists of the media outlet RMF 24:
‘I spoke with other presidents of Ukraine. Each time, as it was with the president Poroshenko, as with the president Zelensky. I do not hide that I had always an impression that I find more understanding from the part of the president Zelensky. I think that he told the truth when he said to me, ‘Andrzej, I’ve never heard before about the killings of the Poles on the lands of Western Ukraine, in Volhynia. We were not told about it at school’.
(The Original in Polish: Rozmawiałem z kolejnymi prezydentami Ukrainy. Za każdym razem, zarówno z prezydentem Poroszenko, jak i z prezydentem Zełenskim. Nie ukrywam, że zawsze miałem wrażenie, że większe zrozumienie znajduję u prezydenta Zełenskiego. Myślę, że mówił prawdę, kiedy powiedział do mnie: "Andrzej, ja o mordach, o zabijaniu Polaków na ziemiach zachodnich Ukrainy, na Wołyniu nigdy nie słyszałem wcześniej. W szkole nas o tym nie uczyli’)
The declaration of the Polish president put a dilemma at once: either Zelensky did not at all learn history at school and at university, and later showed no interest with regard to topical questions that a considerable part of the society cares about, or he is infinitely hypocritical person. Yet, there is another version – about the naiveté and stupidity of Andrzej Duda himself, but we put it aside for the time being.
Apart from that, Andrzej Duda, in his vibrant statement, didn’t mention in which particular conversation he had heard the acknowledgement of Vladimir Zelensky pertaining to his own illiteracy. Yet the date of it, perhaps, due to multiple Polish-Ukrainian processes and personal meetings of these politicians could be of great importance.
But let’s break down, in succession, the contacts of Vladimir Zelensky and Andrzej Duda beginning with their first meeting as well as concomitant actions and statements of Vladimir Zelensky ‘who knows nothing about history’.
PRESIDENTS OF POLAND AND UKRAINE TALKED ABOUT ‘COMPLICATED HISTORICAL PROBLEMS’
The first meeting of Andrzej Duda and Vladimir Zelensky took place in Brussels on June 4, 2019, and the fact, that, at their very first meeting, the questions of reconciliation in historical issues were touched upon, was mentioned by all media outlets that published reports about the meeting of the two presidents.
In particular, the newspaper “Ukrainskaya Pravda’, on June 5, 2019, published an article reporting about the meeting of the Polish and Ukrainian presidents under the title ‘Zelensky and Duda hope to reconcile Ukraine and Poland’, in which rather characteristic words of Andrzej Duda are cited (by the way, Duda doesn’t make any statements about Zelensky being illiterate in difficult Polish-Ukrainian questions):
‘We talked about complicated historical problems. I believe that the Presidents group, which was created by presidents of Poland and Ukraine, could meet and be able to actively solve problems in our bilateral relations and re-establish the spirit of truth. We hope for reconciliation and active cooperation’, said the Polish president Andrzej Duda making clear his position.
Apart from that, Andrzej Duda stressed out: ‘this question also troubles the president of Ukraine’.
It means, judging from direct citations of Andrzej Duda himself, that he wasn’t simply discussing with Vladimir Zelensky ‘complicated historical problems’, but also was discussing the work of the presidential group created by the leaders of the two countries for solving these issues. And, apart from that, according to the Polish President, these issues trouble the president of Ukraine. It’s interesting, if it’s possible to be concerned about questions you haven’t heard about?
DUDA AND ZELENSKY SPOKE ABOUT EXHUMATION
The next discussion by Vladimir Zelensky and Andrzej Duda of problematic historical questions took place literally in a month time, on July 11, 2019, just on the day of the anniversary of the Volhynia Massacre. The Ukrainian media outlet ‘Glavred’** writes about this in the article entitled ‘President of Poland asked Zelensky about permission to exhume the victims of Volhynia’.
In this article, it is said that the Polish president, after having placed wreaths in commemorations of the victims during the Volhynia slaughter, made a statement saying that he had addressed Zelensky with a request to exhume the bodies of Polish victims in Volhynia.
‘In order to avoid malicious memory or animosity, commemoration is necessary. And the condition of this honoring is a consent from the part of the Ukrainian side to make exhumation in order to mark graves so that the descendants know the places where they can come to, where they can light a grave lantern, to lay down flowers, to prey, where they can think and remember their relatives. On this we should build hour relations for the future’, pointed out Andrzej Duda.
ZELENSKY’S FRAME OF MIND TWO MONTHS BEFORE THE FIRST MEETING WITH ANDRZEJ DUDA
Before coming over to the report about the next face-to-face historical meeting between Duda and Zrlrnsky, we would like to remind about how and when Vladimir Zelensky articulated his attitude towards Stepan Bandera, ideologue and inspirator of killing of the Poles.
In April 2019, three days before the second round of the presidential elections in Ukraine, the BBS published an article about Zelensky under a very telling title ‘Zelensky on Bandera: to a part of Ukrainians, he is a hero and this is cool’. It means that one and a half months before the meeting with Duda, Vladimir Zelensky, who, supposedly knows nothing about complicated historical questions, still makes a loud statements that, for a part of Ukraine’s population, Stepan Bandera is a hero. Yet, if any reasonable man speaks about a hero, then it is presupposed that he has to know something about this person.
Actually, the Devil, as well as lie, is in the details, so goes the saying. If you pay attention to the statement of Vladimir Zelensky that ‘Stepan Bandera is a hero for a part of Ukrainians’, then, saying this, he could not not to know that, for another part of Ukrainians, Stepan Bandera is not a hero at all, but an enemy and a murderer. Zelensky understood perfectly well that Stepan Bandera is not a hero for the whole Ukraine, and if he understood this, he, of course, should know why.
But we will proceed to the next meeting between Vladimir Zelenaky and Andrzej Duda. It took place during the visit of Zelensky to Poland on September 1, 2019, which coincided with the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War. A day before the beginning of official events, Zelensky and Duda carried out meetings and talks, participated in a press conference during which Vladimir Zelensky said that is was ready to unblock the exhumation of the victims of the Volhyian slaughter.
‘I am ready to unblock the process of receiving a permission to carry out exploration works in Ukraine… We have agreed to reset a working group, which will work under the patronage of both presidents so that all stains of the past will not hinder our peoples to build mutual bright future’, stated Vladimir Zelensky.
Actually, the actor who has become president makes once again statements that indicate his understanding of this problem, its complexity and its origins. Nobody hears from him any signs of astonishment with regard to the Polish demands.
ZELENSKY AWARDED A SADIST AND MURDERER FROM THE UKRAINIAN INSURGENT ARMY (UPA) THE TITLE OF THE HERO OF UKRAINE
Moreover, on October 14, 2022, telling the Poles about his willingness to smooth sharp historical questions (in Ukraine, on this day, is commemorated the Day of UPA, fighting formations of nationalists who, indeed, had organized this bloody Volhynian slaughter of the Poles) Vladimir Zelensky awards Miroslav Vasilyavich Simchich, one of the few living sotniks (hundreders) of the UPA, with the title of the Hero of Ukraine.
The Decree of the President No 699/2022 on awarding M.Simchich with the title of the Hero of Ukraine.
For heroism manifested in struggle for independence of Ukraine, remarkable personal achievements in creating of Ukrainian statehood, longstanding and fruitful public activities, I decree:
To award Miroslav Vasilyevich Simchich, Ukrainian military and public figure, sotnik of the Ukrainian, Insurrection Army, political prisoner of Soviet concentration camps, the title of the Hero of Ukraine with investing of the order “The Golden Star’.
President of Ukraine V. Zelensky
October 14, 2022’.
This reward sent shockwaves among people who know the history of the struggle against Ukrainian Nazis’ henchmen during the 1940s, because Simchich is a well-known personality, war criminal, who was condemned in the USSR and spent 32 years in prison. The materials of his case were declassified long ago, they are known to the Polish side, and, apart from that, they were also published in Russia several times. In particular, a large investigation of his crimes was published by our colleagues from the information agency ‘Regnum’.
Let us cite some fragments from the Simchich case:
‘Moreover, Simchich, apart from giving the order to his hundred fighters to exterminate inhabitants of the village of Polish nationality, their houses, and, for this purpose, he distributed roles among bandits, he personally headed one of the extermination groups he had created, and, with the defendant of the same case Nikolay Petrovich Genik, they suddenly broke into houses and killed the incapacitated person Mikhail Leontyevich Ivanitsky, his wife Petrunya Mikhailovna Ivanitskaya and a young girl (her personality was not identified).
The former participant of this assault, a witness Vasily Antonovich Genik, reported about the leading role of Simchich in slaughtering of local inhabitants of the village Pistyn: ‘While approaching to the village Pistyn, the hundred (sotnya) of Moroz was stopped and the sitting now before me Krivonos, Simchich Miroslav Vasilyevich, addressing the bandits of the hundred, ordered them to kill all inhabitants of the village Pistyn of Polish nationality, not paying any attention whether they would be men or women, old or children…’
‘…women, men, old or children, and to burn their houses, moreover, he warned that if somebody from the bandits would avoid fulfilling this order and would show mercy, so a death punishment would wait for him. At the same time, Krivonos (Miroslav Valilyevich Simchich) divided the hundred into smaller groups and, having given as rangers completely unknown to me Bandera followers from the village Pistan that had arrived by that time, ordered – some of them should go to the security outpost in order to guarantee impunity of hundred’s assault, and others should go directly to murder people and burn houses. He also ordered his bandits to put white armbands so that during the night to see who is ours and who is not, so that they would not shoot each other… I ended up in a group that was directly under command of Krivonos (Miroslav Simchich)…
… Then we attacked the house of an incapacitated person – Mikhail Leontyevich Ivanitsky. When we entered his hut, I saw that this man was lying near his bed and was groaning, and Miroslav Vasilyevich Simchich was beating him with his legs. Then I also came up to this man and hit him several times by the barrel of my rifle at his chest, and in this fashion we killed this man’ (vol. 3 a, pages 163-164, 232)
It’s worth pointing out that that Vladimir Zelensky ‘who doesn’t know history’ was not the first to celebrate this hanker and Nazi. In the already remote 2005, Viktor Yuschenko, who just came to power and to president’s chair after the first maidan, awarded Miroslav Simchich with a medal ‘For Merit’, and then Pyotr Poroshenko continued the tradition of rewarding this castigator and in 2015 have him a “Freedom Order’.
Actually, Vladimir Zelensky decided to outdo his predecessors and to award Simchich the highest decoration of the country. By the way, apart from a flow of state rewards, the former fighter of UPA was celebrated by erecting his monument while he was still alive. Yet, Vladimir Zelensky, while rewarding Simchich, ‘didn’t know this, of course’. We give credit to that, together with Andrzej Duda? Or yet we don’t?
Ukrainian Nazi Miroslav Simchich against the background of his intravitam monument erected in Ukraine, in the town Kolomiye in 2008 during the rule of Viktor Yuschenko, president of the ‘first maidan’
AFTER REWARDING THIS CASTIGATOR, ZELENSKY AND DUDA GO TO CHURCH TO PREY FOR VICTIMS OF GENOCIDE
Half a year after the rewarding on July 9, 2023, Miroslav Simchich, castigator and sadist, Vladimir Zelensky extended a warm welcome to Andrzej Duda. The meeting was not announced and it was taking place on the Ukrainian territory, in the town Lutsk, the main town of Volhynia. Both presidents took part in a liturgy in the Roman-Catholic cathedral of the Saints Apostles Peter and Paul dedicated to anniversary of the Volhynia slaughter.
Based on the results of these commemorative events, Vladimir Zelensky, who ‘doesn’t who history’, wrote on his page in Twitter**: ‘Together we honor all innocent victims of Volhynia. Memory unites us. Together we are stronger!’
On the whole, ‘here he remembers, there he doesn’t’, as goes a song by the Russian singer and songwriter Vladimir Vysotsky: ‘he, bastard, was doing a number on us’. Only in this case this hysterical, crazy and bloodthirsty comedian governs a whole country, rules Ukraine without memory and without scruples.
Evidently, the president-comedian Vladimir Zelensky, who didn’t study history at school, as well as his Polish ‘teacher of history’ Andrzej Duda who is acquitting him, are as bad as each other, they both treat people as aquarium fishes. They are both apologists of Goebbels’s ‘monstrous lie’; they are driveling together and they are cynically hoping that nobody remembers anything.
It’s all for naught. The Volhynia slaughter is not a Texas horror-film. The land remembers. The blood remembers.
Author: Alexander Zhelnin
See the Russian version at: «Гнусные провалы в памяти. Зеленский и Дуда «забыли», что поминали жертв Волынской резни в 2019 и 2023 году»
*Иноагенты, экстремисты; **экстремистские террористические организации;**UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) is a terrorist Nazi organization the activities of which are prohibited on the territory of the Russian Federation.
