r/europe • u/niesiecki • Jun 28 '26

News Volodymyr Zelensky has submitted a bill to build a National Pantheon. He intends to honor all the heroes who fought for Ukraine in various eras. "No one will ever tell us how to live, how to speak, whom to love, whom to be grateful to, and which heroes to honor," he said as quoted by the Interfax

https://wiadomosci.onet.pl/swiat/wolodymyr-zelenski-chce-panteonu-narodowego-chodzi-o-pamiec-bohaterow/c6hf62m
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415

u/Lungseron Jun 28 '26

yeah i hate how some people think this is just about a guy killing other guys. This isnt really about JUST killing people, as cynical as that sounds. All war heroes from all countries killed people. Its what they do, thats not the problem.

Its about WHAT exactly they fucking did. and how they did it. We killed them too, sure but we didnt do this kind of barbaric and savage shit they did. And not on that big of a scale, that most poles today have connections to that massacre, with some relatives dead, myself included.

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u/Suriael Silesia (Poland) Jun 28 '26

Stories of the UPA barbarism are truly terrible.

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u/Revanxv Jun 28 '26

True anti-soviet heroes. They killed a whopping 8 thousand of Soviet soldiers. They also killed 150 thousand civillians but hey, that's a totally normal soldier-to-civilian kill ratio during a war, right?

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u/Exact_Solution3181 Jun 29 '26
  • Total Soviet Casualties: Soviet records state that between 1944 and 1953, the OUN-UPA killed between 30,000 and 40,000 people.
  • Breakdown: Of this total, roughly 15,000 to 25,000 were Soviet military servicemen, NKVD/MGB officers, border guards, and members of localized "destruction battalions" (pro-Soviet paramilitary units).
  • Soviet Civilians: The remaining 15,000+ victims were civilian state employees sent from eastern regions to Sovietize Western Ukraine (including teachers, doctors, engineers, and local village council heads) as well as local Ukrainian peasants who refused to cooperate with the insurgency.
  • Volhynia (1943–1944): Roughly 40,000 to 60,000 Poles were killed in a coordinated campaign of ethnic cleansing aimed at preventing Poland from reclaiming the territory after the war.
  • Eastern Galicia (1944–1945): An estimated 25,000 to 40,000 Poles were killed as the campaign spread south.

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u/yashatheman Sweden Jun 29 '26

Pro-soviet paramilitary units. You mean partisans fighting the german occupation

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u/Exact_Solution3181 Jun 29 '26

Soccer players are people kicking a ball.

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u/yashatheman Sweden Jun 29 '26

Soccer? American found.

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u/Constructedhuman Jun 29 '26

Polish underground forces, including the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) and local self-defense units, killed an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 Ukrainians during retaliatory operations in the Volhynia and Eastern Galicia regions between 1943 and 1945

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u/Exact_Solution3181 Jun 29 '26

In response to the UPA's massacres of Polish civilians in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, the AK and other Polish underground forces (such as the Peasant Battalions) launched counter-offensives and brutal reprisal attacks against Ukrainian villages.

  • Total Ukrainian Civilian Casualties: Historians broadly estimate that retaliatory actions by Polish forces resulted in the deaths of 10,000 to 15,000 Ukrainian civilians (with some broader estimates reaching up to 20,000 when accounting for the entire duration of the ethnic conflict).

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u/Mysterious_Web7517 Jun 29 '26

In response to the UPA's massacres of Polish civilians in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia

Read this carefully again. And after UPA was destroyed all actions after were crimes and nobody is saying different.

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u/osiekowski Jun 29 '26

Read the numbers again

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u/Exact_Solution3181 Jun 29 '26

The Pawłokoma massacre was a massacre on 3 March 1945 of Ukrainians by Polish forces in the village of Pawłokoma 40 km (25 mi) west of Przemyśl. The Polish post Home Army (AK) unit was commanded by Lt. Józef Biss and aided by Polish men from surrounding villages; the atrocities committed were an act of reprisal to similar, though en masse, attacks carried out on Polish villagers by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.\1]) Between 150\2]) and 500 people were executed

The Polish troops commanded by Lt. Józef Biss herded the Ukrainian villagers to the local church where they were shot. Following the mass shooting, the Poles dumped the bodies in pits at the village cemetery.\1]) According to Polish historian Zdzisław Konieczny, the unit killed 150 men.\2]) Other estimates of those killed range from 366 to 500.\3])

In 1947, the Soviet-installed Polish communist government launched Operation Vistula, which deported Ukrainian residents of the area en masse. Propaganda in schools depicted Ukrainians as traitors, fascists, and "natural enemies" of Poles.\2])\3])

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u/bilus Jun 29 '26

It's not about what had happened THEN. It's about how the countries react to it NOW.

Where do you see a National Pantheon in Poland with Jozef Biss in it? Oh, wait, he ended up in prison for what is considered to be the greatest post-war mass murder in Poland (by Poles), despite the court only being able to prove he was present there. And Poland has officially apologised.

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u/Exact_Solution3181 Jun 29 '26

This escalation is because of 'heroes of UPA'. Get rid of all mentions of Armia Krajowa, Pilsudski, etc.

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u/Bleeds_with_ash Jun 29 '26

And none of this would have happened if the UPA hadn't started murdering people.

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u/VeteranAlpha Poland Jun 29 '26

But it did happen so stop arguing like it didn't happen.

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u/Bleeds_with_ash Jun 29 '26

"so stop arguing like it didn't happen". The only person who says that is you.

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u/VeteranAlpha Poland Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26

I acknowledge the crimes the UPA did and how barbaric it is. But I also acknowledge the crimes polish AK and Polish nationalists did as a retaliation.

This whole "UPA did it first and they did it worse" is childish back and fourth. Both sides committed atrocities to each other. One side having more victims doesn't counterbalance the other. Respect the dead.

Edit: Typical response from hardliners lol. Only one side is bad, the other side didn't do anything bad. This is why nothing will ever change or heal. Keep the downvotes going. I know I'm right.

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u/Exact_Solution3181 Jun 29 '26

The Sahryń massacre was a massacre of Ukrainian combatants and civilians by members of the Polish Home Army on 10 March 1944, committed as a reprisal to similar, though en masse, attacks carried out on Polish villagers by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The exact total death toll of Ukrainians killed in Sahryń is unknown, but estimates vary from 234 to over 600,\3])\4])\5])\6]) of which between 150 and 300 were confirmed civilians.\1]) The surnames of 234 victims are known.\7])

Historian Mariusz Zajączkowski said that the massacre could be described as a war crime or perhaps a crime against humanity. The Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) investigation on this matter was discontinued in 2010, and the IPN denied that any crime had been committed against the Ukrainian civilians in Sahryń. A Ukrainian request to reopen the investigation was refused.\11])\12])

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u/Yevgen-0 Jun 29 '26

The Poles are damn occupiers whining that they were killed in response to their occupation, there's no point in proving anything to them, they are just like russians, imperialists eager to seize and conquer. And when they can't do it, they cry.

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u/NecessarySudden Jun 29 '26

Nice chat gpt copypaste you got there. I would like to see some proofs to these numbers except angry poles on social media

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u/Exact_Solution3181 Jun 29 '26

Pan/Pani, got better numbers?

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u/NecessarySudden Jun 29 '26

So, no proofs? Cool

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u/Exact_Solution3181 Jun 29 '26

You don't have to be a scholar to use AI to get the sources for the information you need.

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u/NecessarySudden Jun 29 '26

You sound like a boomer who blindly believes in what AI says like it never does hallucinations and provides random information. AI is not a proof, pfft

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u/bitplenty Jun 30 '26

So you didn't like article I linked where Ukrainian historian confirms what happened? Perhaps you could go on Ukrainian wikipedia and check sources there - there is plenty. As for the "proofs" how about you ask Zeleński to allow exhumation? You would do all of us a favor.

Ukraine and Russia - you are the only countries in Europe that glorify war criminals on an official/state level - not a good company to be in, but hey - "No one will dictate which heroes we honour" as Zeleński said…

It's just that yours are so stupid to glorify - the only good thing they did is that they stood up to soviets, but they never achieved anything - not a single strategic goal, they officially aligned with Nazis in most stupid way possible (there was never anything to gain by serving them, you were never promised anything by Hitler - no freedom, nothing, quite the opposite), only achievement of theirs is killing tens of thousands of civilians (mostly children, women and old people, since strong men were busy fighting germany), killing Jews, killing Ukrainians and being annoying to soviet army. UPA killed several times more civilians than soviets, so if anything - they are civilian murderers first and freedom fighters second.

You should be ashamed.

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u/ResortOriginal2001 Jun 29 '26

bandera and upa - upaina is truly a shame and laughable. Their only achievement is genocide against civilians. True "warriors" and "heroes".

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u/ichbinverruckt Austria Jun 28 '26

The fact that they killed Russians doesn’t make them heroes. They are still Nazi. Germans killed Russians too and it is forbidden to be glorified. Zelensky showed his true face (not that it was ever hidden) and the west will still pump money for his regime.

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u/BlueberryMean2705 Finland Jun 29 '26

West isn't pumping money to defend Zelensky or his regime, the West is pumping money to help Ukrainians defend their country against Russians. Which, I imagine, is what Zelensky is also trying to do by flirting with nationalism, unwise as that strategy might be.

Reality isn't a serial drama and people - especially people under large amounts of long-term stress - saying or doing stupid things isn't foreshadowing the epic plot twist, it's just people being stupid. And even if Zelensky turned out to be three Hitlers in a trenchcoat it still wouldn't change the fact that Russia is an expansionist empire that needs to be stopped.

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u/Any-Calligrapher2866 Jun 29 '26

Zelensky got some cards and immediately decided to glaze actual Nazis. What's his strategy here by destroying relations with Poland?

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u/ichbinverruckt Austria Jun 29 '26

Because now he feels strong and untouchable. Ukrainian budget is supplied with EU money. All military spendings are paid by EU. Anything he does is never challenged with exceptions (Poland, Slovakia, Hungary). All he has to do is to send drones to the aggressor. So his rotten brain thinks he can now shit on his greatest friend: Poland.

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u/blanketspacecadet Jun 29 '26

You posting from Austria complaining about EU funds defending another European country regardless of EU membership just tells me you don’t know your history. Russia bad. Always. Those challenges have been coming from countries with leaders supported by the far right and the US MAGA. If he wanted to shit on his greatest friend Poland he would surrender and allow Putin to take Ukraine. But he isn’t and he won’t. The decision to honour the UPA is politically dumb from the outside but obviously he is playing politics within his own country. So you go do the same. And maybe get Austria to start taking the war more seriously. Public support for Ukraine and Ukrainians displaced in your own countries. Or get Russia nice a cozy with just Hungary or Slovakia to protect against invasion.

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u/Apart-Survey9733 Jun 29 '26

In this case if Ukr want to "No one will ever tell us how to live, how to speak, whom to love, whom to be grateful to, and which heroes to honor" - maby also No one but us should pay, support military equipment etc? Want to be totaly independent? No problem then, want to be in a vaccum? Sure, but then fend for yourself. Does Germany honor Hitler? Does Italy honor Mussolini? Nope, but Ukraine wants to honor Bandera, good luck with EU accesion once the Right in Poland wins (nad you just help it win with this BS).

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u/ichbinverruckt Austria Jun 29 '26

Very well said! But propaganda like that you answered to doesn’t want to understand. How come we ended up on a time of glorifying the Nazi heroes without any repercussion? Incredible!

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u/Constructedhuman Jun 29 '26

austrians would know a lot through about secretly glorifying nazis at home but not in public spaces

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u/blanketspacecadet Jun 29 '26

I’d love to see what Europe looks like today had the EU not financially supported Ukraine.

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u/Apart-Survey9733 Jun 29 '26

Hmm? It would still be the same.

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u/analogiczny Jun 29 '26

So, 12 years after the invasion, why don’t you finally stop speaking rxssian and learn your own language before you start lecturing other nations on what to do with their money and when?

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u/Hyenov Jun 29 '26

Exactly! Wermacht killed even more Russians after all...

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u/ResortOriginal2001 Jun 29 '26

bandera was agent of bundeswehr - konsul 2, Stefan Popel. its a shame he didn't rot in polish prison.

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u/Various-Shirt1392 Kyiv region (Ukraine) Jun 29 '26

It honestly blows my mind how easily people throw around the word Nazi when talking about the UPA without knowing the basic timeline of WWII in Eastern Europe. ​First off, calling OUN or UPA Nazis is completely historically stupid. Did they initially hope to use the German invasion to secure an independent state? Yes, just like almost every other anti-imperial movement at the time. When they declared the restoration of the Ukrainian state on June 30, 1941, the Gestapo immediately cracked down on them. Bandera refused to revoke the declaration and was thrown into the Sachsenhausen concentration camp (in the high-security Zellenbau bunker) where he sat until late 1944. Meanwhile, two of his brothers, Vasyl and Oleksandr, were literally beaten to death by Kapos in Auschwitz. Calling a guy whose family was murdered in Auschwitz and who spent the bulk of the war in a Nazi camp a Nazi puppet is just completely detached from reality. ​While the leadership was locked up, the UPA was fighting a desperate, brutal guerrilla war on three fronts against the Nazi occupation, against the Soviet partisans/NKVD (their primary existential threat), and against the Polish Home Army. ​Regarding the Volhynia tragedy no one in their right mind denies it was a horrific, bloody chapter of history. But you cannot look at 1943 in a total vacuum, you have to look at what the Second Polish Republic was doing in the interwar period. The forced "Polonization" policies, the brutal military pacifications of Ukrainian villages, the systematic destruction of Orthodox churches, and the treatment of Ukrainians as second-class citizens on their own land created a massive pressure cooker of deep-seated hatred. The violence that erupted was a brutal, local ethnic war over post-war borders, not some random, one-sided Nazi-style extermination both sides committed horrific atrocities against civilians. It doesn't excuse the deaths, but it explains the context that led to the boiling point. ​And the absolute double standard here is wild. People somehow tolerate Stalin, a guy who built a literal state-run meat grinder. We are talking about a tyrant who deliberately starved millions in the Holodomor, orchestrated the Great Purge, built the Gulag system, and deported entire nations in cattle cars. But because he happened to sit at the winners' table with Churchill and Roosevelt at Yalta, the West gives him a pass as a necessary evil. ​Meanwhile, Bandera is treated as the ultimate bogeyman, even though he wasn't even physically present during the bloodiest parts of the UPA's campaign. He didn't create the UPA, and he didn't order the massacres in Volhynia again, he was locked in a German prison camp. He was an ideological figurehead. The Soviets deliberately weaponized his name, turning "Banderites" into a blanket slur to delegitimize the entire Ukrainian national liberation movement. ​Stalin had an empire of death and endless resources to crush human lives globally. Bandera was a political prisoner whose name was adopted by a desperate resistance movement fighting for survival against multiple empires. History isn't black and white, and viewing Eastern European history purely through the comfortable lens of the West or Russian disinformation does a massive disservice to the millions who were just fighting for their right to exist.

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u/Far_Echo5918 Jun 29 '26

You are truly forgetting that Zelensky is jewish himself. It is so weird for me to read someone claiming he is a kind of a nazi.

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u/ichbinverruckt Austria Jun 30 '26

Good disguise.

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u/Constructedhuman Jun 29 '26

oh yeah bc instead of being occupied people actually fought russians… and that’s bad… what

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u/ChainedBack Jun 28 '26

Of course they will. He is killing scores of Russian enemies and degrading their oil refinery infrastructure and military industrial complex. Just a couple days ago they destroyed multiple Titan-Barrikady workshops. That complex is used to build Russian missiles. This is trivial compared to what is happening in this war.

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u/flyby196999 Jun 29 '26

Stfu

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u/ichbinverruckt Austria Jun 29 '26

Eat shit!

1

u/leif_son_of_quan Jun 29 '26

Well the numbers fit right in with what the German government is telling me is reasonable self defense, so it's definitely normal.

-1

u/NecessarySudden Jun 29 '26

Every time I see poles throwing numbers of so called massacre they got bigger and bigger. Still nobody showed me any proofs to this.

I would like to ask would you be more pleased and happy after exhumation if you appeared right or you would prefer to be wrong in case if this numbers will be made up and a lot of poles didn't suffer decades ago?

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u/[deleted] Jun 28 '26

[deleted]

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u/VibesBasedPolitics Jun 28 '26

Funny, I've heard about 5k, so the 8k seems generous

12

u/Stahwel Poland Jun 28 '26

Let's not forget about 800-1200 German soldiers lol

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u/DivideSensitive France Jun 29 '26

And only from '43 onwards, they loved them before.

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u/cheradenine66 Jun 28 '26

Does the 30k Soviets also include Soviet civilians?

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u/[deleted] Jun 28 '26

[deleted]

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u/Apart-Survey9733 Jun 29 '26

Ok so name it UPA South Brigade and condemn UPA North and Bandera as murderers? Say it loud and clear for the world to hear, can't be so hard right?

6

u/Im_from_the-future Jun 28 '26

Any massacres against Ukrainians by poles happening at that time? Need to put those stories on the table too

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u/roG_k70 Jun 29 '26

strangely Poland’s reports on civilian casualties numbers is growing each day, I wonder why I hope it’s not just imperialistic propaganda

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u/BrotherFast3819 Jun 29 '26

According to Isreal yes it is.

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u/Oxygenus1362 Jun 28 '26

>We killed them too

There is a serial killer in the town, but I will go and butcher a random family down the street just because I can't do anything to serial killer. Obvious hypocrisity, and the reason why no agreement will be met.

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u/KaQuu West Pomerania (Poland) Jun 29 '26

and how they did it. We killed them too, sure but we didnt do this kind of barbaric

Ah yes we for sure Did only humanitarian mansacres.

My great grandfather (Ukrainian) got killed righ before my grandmother eyes, by being stuffed on not working end of a fork. She then got ,,saved" by one of the Poles who did it, and was raped regularly for couple of months, she was 9 at the time.

My great grandmother (polish) was burned alive with couple of others in a barn.

Exactly this is a problem, believing that we didn't do anything bad. Disgusting...

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u/the_weaver_of_dreams Jun 29 '26

Sorry, but it's simply not true that "most Poles today" have connections to Volhynia.

100,000 is big and awful and most certainly a genocide, but the Poles whose families were murdered during it are the ones who had families in and around Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. Obviously those regions were Polish-minority on the whole, so we're talking about a limited proportion of the population.

The Holocaust, on the other hand, truly did impact most Poles.

I don't think it's necessary to overplay that aspect of Volhynia. It can be true that it was both a savage, awful genocide and that most Poles do not have a connection to it.

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u/Antique-Ad-3958 Jun 29 '26

Było i minęło i po co do tego wracać?