The Volhynia massacres, and the broader campaign of ethnic cleansing against Poles during World War II in Ukraine, were not carried out by the Ukrainian state.
They were committed by a regional insurgent force — the UPA — operating in western Ukraine, whose total membership never exceeded 100,000 throughout its existence. Its political leadership, the OUN, collaborated with Nazi Germany in 1941 and proclaimed a puppet Ukrainian state under the protection of the Third Reich.
Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians fought against Nazism. More than seven million served in the Red Army or Soviet partisan formations.
Yet today, extremists and political idiots in positions of power smear the crimes of the OUN and UPA across the entire Ukrainian nation. They poison relations with Poland and undermine Ukraine's partnerships abroad.
For what? To preserve the cult of war criminals and nationalistic fanatics who dreamed of building an ethnically homogeneous state of a distinctly fascist kind.
That is not a cult any democratic country should embrace.