UKRAINE, POLAND, AND HISTORY

So there have been some attempts to lower the temperature between Kyiv and Warsaw.

Noworodzki and Zelensky held a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara last week.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk sharply criticized Noworodzki's decision to strip Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle, warning that the public feud over history pleases Putin and shocks our allies in stress.

that helping Ukraine defeat Russia remains Poland's supreme national interest.

And the Ukrainian foreign minister recently traveled to Warsaw to propose an anti-crisis package, including establishing a joint council of historians, engaging religious leaders to deescalate the situation.

So history is never far from the surface in this part of the world and certainly in this war.

But these attacks are usually coming from Ukraine's enemy, not one of its closest allies.

Marta, you're the historian among us.

Can you give us some context here? Ukraine and Poland have a long history together, and there are actually multiple grievances on both sides, as I understand it.

Thanks, Brian.

I mean, history is always political.

So if we're looking at politicians using history, we have to look at why they're doing that.

And in my opinion, this is very much a domestic Polish issue.

And I'm not an expert on Polish domestic politics.

But if I take a look and step back, Ukraine and Poland have a very long, very controversial history with lots of wars and atrocities going back hundreds of years.

If we look at Polish Ukrainian history, Polish political rule extended into territories that are now today Ukraine back in the 14th century.

Now, I'm not going to give a history lesson going back to the 14th century.

But there have been lots of tensions.

What happens in 1990-91, Polish elites realize that Ukraine is their ally against Russia.

And they take a strategic decision to leave the history in the past and build relations.

And this is what we've been seeing over the past decades.

And periodically, the historical tensions will flare up again.

Sometimes they come from historians, sometimes they come from political forces on one side or the other.

But overall, Ukrainian and Polish historians have worked very hard to... find out what actually happened and create a record because there is no actual record.

There's still a lot of disputes, which is why these things can get flared up so much.