The Polish Sejm rejected President Karol Nawrocki's bill on changes in the provision of assistance to Ukrainian citizens, which also proposed introducing criminal liability for the propaganda of "Banderism".
Points of attention
- The rejection of Navrotsky's proposal shed light on the complexities of Polish-Ukrainian relations and the sensitivity surrounding historical narratives and national identities.
- The incident underscores the importance of thorough examination and dialogue in policymaking to address contentious issues and avoid escalating tensions between nations.
Navrotsky's proposal failed
Journalists drew attention to the fact that the presidential bill was prepared after the Polish head of state vetoed a new version of the law on assistance to Ukrainians in Poland at the end of August.
What is important to understand is that it duplicated most of the provisions on the gradual withdrawal of some of the support measures that were already included in the government law passed at the end of September.
The country's leader proposed norms that were not in the government law.
The first of them concerned changes to the Polish Criminal Code and provided for an increase in the penalty for illegally crossing the Polish border to five years of imprisonment, as well as an increase in the penalty for organizing illegal border crossing — from 2 to 12 years of imprisonment.
Journalists point out that another change was the introduction of criminal punishment for propaganda of the so-called "Banderism" and the activities of the OUN-UPA.
Ukrainian historians immediately publicly criticized Navrotsky's proposal:
Attempts to equate the anti-imperial, national-liberation activities of the UPA and OUN(b) with genocidal practices and neo-imperial totalitarian regimes of the Nazis and Communists, against which the Ukrainian insurgents primarily fought, are quite questionable.
