Poland charges Ukrainian with vandalising war memorials to stir ethnic tensions

WARSAW, July 16 - Poland has charged an 18-year-old Ukrainian man with inciting ethnic tensions by desecrating memorials to Poles killed by Ukrainian nationalists during World War Two, the Internal Security Agency (ABW) said on Thursday.

The so-called Volhynia massacres have been a source of tension between the countries for years.

The man, referred to as Illia K. under Polish privacy laws, is charged with 47 criminal acts committed between November 2024 and August 2025, including the desecration of memorial sites and preparation for sabotage activities using a drone.

"The aim was to incite ethnic tensions between Poland and Ukraine," ABW said in a statement, adding that it had also identified an online recruitment mechanism using cryptocurrency payments via exchanges registered in Russia and China.

Warsaw has frequently accused Moscow of conducting espionage and influence operations in Poland, allegations that Russia, which invaded Ukraine in 2022, denies.

Diplomatic relations between Warsaw and Kyiv entered their worst crisis in years after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy decided to name an army unit after insurgents who massacred Poles in the 1940s.

Some Ukrainians regard the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) as heroic for the resistance it mounted against the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and as a symbol of Kyiv's struggle for independence from Moscow. But the UPA was also involved in the mass killings of an estimated 100,000 Poles between 1943 and 1945. REUTERS