Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has rejected statements made by Polish presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki who claimed that Ukraine should not be a member of NATO or the EU due to unresolved historical issues.

Source: a statement by the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday, 9 January, as reported by European Pravda

Details: The Foreign Ministry dismissed Nawrocki's remarks about Ukraine’s future in the EU and NATO as "biased and manipulative".

Quote: "Such statements indicate that the Polish politician prioritises short-term political considerations over the strategic security interests of his own country, the good-neighbourly relations between Ukraine and Poland and the shared values of freedom, democracy and justice." 

Details: The ministry emphasised that dialogue between Kyiv and Warsaw regarding historical issues is ongoing, while Nawrocki’s statements were "met with applause in the Kremlin".

Quote: "Regardless of the statements made by this Polish politician, the reality is that Ukraine is already de facto and will become de jure part of the Euro-Atlantic family of nations and of the common European security architecture." 

More details:Karol Nawrocki, supported as a presidential candidate by the former ruling party Law and Justice, stated that he does not see Ukraine as a part of "either the EU or NATO".

"A country that cannot answer for a very brutal crime against 120,000 of its neighbours cannot be part of international alliances," Nawrocki declared, referring to disputes over the events in Volhynia in the 1940s.

Background: 

• In late November, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha issued a joint statement addressing the issue of exhumations of victims of the Volyn tragedy.
• [The Volyn (Volhynia) tragedy was a series of events that led to the ethnic cleansing of the Polish and Ukrainian populations in 1943 during World War II. It was part of a long-standing rivalry between Ukrainians and Poles in what is now Ukraine's west. Poland considers the Volyn tragedy a genocide of Poles – ed.]

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