Poland has suspended the transfer of a military aid package to Ukraine after the Lviv Regional Council declared 2027 the year of Roman Shukhevych, Oleh Olzhych and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), SFG Media reported. RBC-Ukraine, citing a source, reported that a large-scale package was being prepared for shipment when the council voted, and that its supply is currently suspended while work is under way to resolve the situation and resume deliveries. The suspension is reported by those outlets; no formal Polish government announcement of a suspension was in the reports cited here.

Source: RBC-Ukraine via Antikor

The council's initiative, proposed by regional council member Sviatoslav Sheremeta, was timed to anniversaries connected to Shukhevych, Olzhych and the UPA. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski called Shukhevych "a UPA commander who gave orders for the expulsion and killing of Poles", SFG Media reported. In 2016, Poland's Sejm recognised the 1943-1945 Volhynia massacres, in which UPA units killed tens of thousands of Poles, as genocide — the historical wound at the centre of the row.

Source: SFG Media

Tusk: a "suicidal tactic"

Prime Minister Donald Tusk called the regional council's decision unwise, harmful to Ukraine itself and a "suicidal tactic", saying he and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had made considerable efforts to restore relations after an earlier controversy over naming a Ukrainian brigade after the UPA, SFG Media reported. Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz called the decision "unacceptable" and said it deepens divisions rather than building trust. Interior Minister Marcin Kierwinski said Sheremeta had been banned from entering the Schengen Area for five years; Sheremeta described the Polish reaction as "strange" and said Ukrainian regional councils had adopted similar decisions before.

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry also criticised the council's decision, calling it "counterproductive" for Ukrainian-Polish relations, noting the deputies had not consulted it, and urging Warsaw to "refrain from harsh steps", SFG Media reported. Poland is one of Ukraine's most important military backers and a main transit route for Western aid, so even a temporary pause in a major package lands at a sensitive moment in the war against Russia.