Poland has put a large weapons package for Ukraine on hold after Lviv regional councillors voted to dedicate 2027 to the far-right Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), RBC-Ukraine reported on October 21, relations with several of Ukraine's allies deteriorate thanks to diplomatic blunders.
Later the same day, Poland’s defence ministry spokesman called the report “false information”, RBC-Ukraine reported, but relations with Poland are tenser than first appear due to lingering animocity over the Volhynia WWII massacre and a growing resentment to the million Ukrainian refugees living in the country.
Councillors in Lviv voted on October 20 to name next year after the UPA, which served as the military wing of the OUN-B (the Banderite faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) and has been accused by historians of participating in mass ethic cleansing and other atrocities. The year is also dedicated to UPA's commander Roman Shukhevych and the nationalist poet Oleh Olzhych.The regional authorities had "managed" to hold the vote just as Warsaw was preparing the shipment, the source said.
"Their irresponsible actions have now put delivery of this package on hold. Intensive efforts are underway through back channels to resolve a problem that was created out of nothing."
Ukraine fatigue is gathering momentum fast. When the UN General Assembly voted to condemn the invasion in March 2022, 141 states backed the text and just five opposed it – including Russia. This month, when Russia put its own resolution counting Western sanctions among the modern forms of colonialism to the Assembly’s Fourth Committee, only 49 countries voted against it — the US, the UK, Japan, Israel, Ukraine and all 27 EU members among them — while every BRICS state voted in favour, backing the Russian motion. The coalition that once mustered 141 votes against Moscow can no longer reliably field 50, and almost all of those it does field are Western.
Relations rows
The quarrel is the third in a month between Kyiv and a country it counts as a friend. South Korea is pulling half its diplomats out of Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has accused US President Donald Trump of pushing Ukraine to capitulate, and a growing number of EU governments say they will not help fill a €70bn hole in Ukraine's 2027 war budget.
The coalition behind Kyiv has shrunk from the whole EU, under the Biden administration, to the coalition of the willing and now to a handful of leaders whose voters are losing patience with the heavy spending going to
Warsaw reacted angrily. Prime Minister Donald Tusk said such demonstrations "only harm Ukraine", and Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski asked for a five-year Schengen entry ban on Sviatoslav Sheremeta, the councillor behind the resolution. Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz called the vote unacceptable and said it "deepens divisions" between the two nations. "The Ukrainian authorities must distance themselves from this position," he said.
Kyiv moved quickly. Ukraine's foreign ministry called the Lviv decision "counterproductive", and Poland's Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Bosacki said officials close to Zelenskiy had promised it would not take effect. The announcement has since disappeared from the council's website, although it has not been formally revoked.
History wars
The UPA is honoured by many Ukrainians as an independence army that fought Soviet rule, but its units killed an estimated 30,000 to 60,000 Polish civilians in Volhynia and eastern Galicia in 1943-1944, crimes Poland regards as genocide. Between 20,000 and 30,000 Ukrainians were also killed in the violence.
The Lviv vote reopens a wound that had barely closed. In the spring Zelenskiy gave a special forces unit the honorary title "Heroes of the UPA", and on June 19 Polish President Karol Nawrocki stripped him of the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest award. Senior politicians in Warsaw then threatened to block Ukraine's EU accession bid unless Kyiv stopped glorifying the UPA. Polish voters are with them: 44% favoured suspending military aid over the UPA honours in a July poll, against 41% who wanted it to continue.
The shift in Kyiv's memory politics has been driven from the top. In May Zelenskiy attended the reburial of Andriy Melnyk, a wartime leader of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists who offered to march alongside the Wehrmacht, with his chief of staff Kyrylo Budanov at his side. Budanov presented it as the first step towards a "Pantheon of Prominent Ukrainians".
The links between the state and the far right are an uncomfortable fact that Kyiv's allies have mostly chosen not to discuss. Andriy Biletsky, founder of the Azov movement, now commands the army's 3rd Corps and regularly appears in presidential polls, and veterans of Azov's political wing run frontline technology units showcased to Western defence companies.
Seoul walks out
South Korea said on October 20 it would withdraw about half of its embassy staff from Kyiv, after recalling its ambassador on October 8 for the first time in protest since a 2008 dispute with Japan. A charge d'affaires and the consular team will stay.
The row began when Zelenskiy told the UN General Assembly on September 23 that Ukraine had handed two captured North Korean soldiers to Seoul. South Korea says both sides had agreed to keep the transfer secret to protect the men's families in North Korea. Kyiv "had taken no positive steps" despite repeated requests for an explanation and an apology, foreign ministry spokesman Park Doo-soon said. Seoul is one of the few Asian democracies that has backed Ukraine politically and with humanitarian aid.
Trump turns
The break with Washington is the most damaging. "I believe steps have been taken to convince Ukraine to capitulate," Zelenskiy told Bloomberg in an interview on October 18, accusing the US of slowing Starlink connections, delaying Patriot interceptors and failing to pass on early warnings of Russian ballistic missile launches.
The quarrel followed Trump's deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to hold off new sanctions in exchange for Russian diesel exports to cool fuel prices before the November 3 midterms. Trump has since said "somebody else" should negotiate for Ukraine and told reporters that "Russia frankly has been fine on Ukraine". It is the worst rupture since the Oval Office shouting match of February 2025, after which Kyiv spent weeks getting relations "back on track" by agreeing to US-led ceasefire talks.
Kyiv can least afford it now. Ukraine's interceptor missiles have run dry as Russia steps up strikes on the grid, and Nato officials fear the personal feud could force Kyiv into a painful settlement, Bloomberg reported on October 20.
Running out of money
Europe is also tiring of the bill. The EU has already lent Ukraine €90bn for 2026-2027, but Zelenskiy has asked for at least €70bn more to cover next year, putting the cost of the war in 2027 at €155bn. EU leaders agreed at their October 15-16 summit that the €70bn gap must be covered, but Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said straight afterwards that Czechia would not guarantee more borrowed EU money for Kyiv.
Bulgaria followed on October 20. "Bulgaria cannot contribute to this EUR 70 billion," Prime Minister Rumen Radev said, state news agency BTA reported. Radev had already pulled Bulgaria out of the coalition of the willing in July, saying it would not take part in a group "that insists on continuing financial and military aid to Ukraine", Ukrinform reported. With Slovakia refusing state military aid since Robert Fico returned to power in 2023, most of Central Europe is now outside the camp paying for Ukraine's war.
In France, the far-right frontrunner for next spring's presidential election, Marine Le Pen, has pledged to end financial support for Kyiv while continuing to train Ukrainian troops and supply military aid, the Kyiv Post reported.
Germany remains Kyiv's biggest European backer, but at a political cost to Chancellor Friedrich Merz. "My biggest concern is not our economy," Merz told the Berlin Global Dialogue this week, saying he worried more about Russia's influence on German society, the Berliner Zeitung reported. Only 15% of Germans are satisfied with his work, the AfD leads at a record 30% and more than four in 10 say German support for Ukraine has gone too far, an INSA poll for Bild am Sonntag showed in early October, Euronews reported.
That leaves Ukraine relying on a shrinking circle of governments in Berlin, Paris, London and the Nordic and Baltic capitals, whose leaders remain committed even as their voters drift away.
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