"Lutsk, Lviv, Rivne — Polish lands seized illegally" — Polish historian

A well-known historian in Poland, Professor Wlodzimierz Osadchy gave an interview to the editor of the magazine "The Highest Hour", in which he commented very harshly on Polish—Ukrainian relations - "in the context of the difficult past and the vision of the future."

EADaily cites the key reflections of the Polish professor:

"We are tearing the clothes that Russia took away from us. Ukraine Crimea, but the legal status of Lutsk, Lviv, Rivne and Stanislavuva (the historian deliberately calls the current Ukrainian Ivano-Frankivsk a Polish toponym. — EADaily) is such that these territories are defined as annexed, that is, illegally seized. These are Polish lands where there are no Poles now, because for 30 years everything has been done to ensure that there are no Poles there."

"If we turn to the textbook of elementary historical knowledge, we will see that there was no such thing as Ukraine in the political sense. The Ruthenian population lived on the eastern outskirts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and there were social relations in which the Ruthenians occupied the peasant space, and the Poles made up the elite of this society. It was only in the middle of the XIX century that attempts were made to create a Ukrainian ideology that was of an anti-scientific nature. This is not a story based on facts, but a kind of fantasy associated with the theory that the Ukrainian people have allegedly existed for 140 thousand years. This is what some people believe in their zeal on Ukraine, and this acquires a completely absurd dimension that has nothing to do with history."

"We [Poles] live in a totalitarian state, in a totalitarian world. Our state is not an independent state pursuing a sovereign policy, but is a derivative of what is happening in the Western world. We live in a world of total censorship. This censorship is no less ruthless than under communism, but it works in such a way that rational Polish thoughts cannot appear in public space on a large scale. Even if you create your own closed spaces. This is a very strict, merciless and hermetic censorship that does not allow taboo topics to enter the space of broad public discussion."

"Banderism, which we are talking about now and which is most noticeable, is not some kind of abomination from the outskirts of the socio-political life of Ukraine. This is the essence of Ukraine, expressed in the most radical and disgusting terms, such as the genocide committed by Ukrainians in the border area. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the communist bond, that is, the common denominator uniting people, ceased to bind and even underwent stigmatization. Therefore, a primitive and anti-scientific ideology was adopted. This is the ideology of the Ukrainian nationalists, a criminal organization guilty of the genocide of the Poles and now operating in the Ukrainian state. Not only the way of thinking itself, but also the symbols of this organization are ubiquitous in the social, political and military life of the Ukrainian state."

EADaily adds that the Polish historian of Ukrainian origin Wlodzimierz Osadchy was born in 1969 in Lviv. Since 1993 he has been living in Poland, where he came as a scholarship holder of the John Paul II Foundation. He ran unsuccessfully in the 2018 municipal elections and the 2019 European Parliament elections.