Andrzej Szeptycki, Deputy Minister of Science in the government of Donald Tusk, in a media statement compared members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army to the “cursed soldiers” of the Polish anti-communist underground.
“What is this man still doing in the Polish government after such a statement? The next day he should either resign out of shame himself or be dismissed. And if Donald Tusk does not want to do it, then if Mr. Zgorzelski and Mr. Kosiniak are defending Polish history and Polish truth, they should urgently demand from the minister and the prime minister that this man be removed from the Polish government”, said today Marcin Przydacz, head of the Office of International Policy at the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland.
At the end of May, Volodymyr Zelenskyy named one of his country’s armed forces units “Heroes of the UPA”. As he stated, he did so “in order to restore historical traditions of the national army and taking into account the exemplary performance of assigned tasks in defending the territorial integrity and independence of Ukraine.”
The decision was met with critical reactions from Polish politicians. President Karol Nawrocki stressed that he was outraged. He stated that the Ukrainian president’s decision provides “the best material and a lot of oxygen for Russian propaganda”. He also announced that on Monday, June 8, a meeting of the Chapter of the Order of the White Eagle would take place; as he said, he proposed that one of the points on the agenda would be the revocation of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Order of the White Eagle.
However, it was Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education Andrzej Szeptycki who caused controversy with his remarks.
On TOK FM, he said:
“The UPA fought for Ukraine’s independence, within this Ukrainian imaginary, primarily against the Soviets, and it was a hopeless struggle. With all the positive and negative connotations of the term, they were somewhat like Ukrainian cursed soldiers. (…) People who fought under hopeless conditions for a long time, consistently, and a point to which Ukrainians fighting Moscow since 2014 can naturally refer.”
Public opinion reacted with strong outrage
Szeptycki, a professor of social sciences, earned his habilitation with the dissertation “Ukraine and Russia. A Study of Dependency”. For several years he worked as an analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs, and in 2016–2021 he served as co-coordinator of the Centre for Polish and European Studies at the Institute of International Relations of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.
Szeptycki’s statement is not his first such public controversy. In February 2026, under a photo of a gravestone with Ukrainian flags and Ukrainian nationalist symbols, he posted the comment “Glory to the heroes”.
Today on TV Republika, Marcin Przydacz, head of the Office of International Policy at the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland, reacted decisively to Szeptycki’s comparison of UPA members to “cursed soldiers”.
He pointed out that “in the government of Donald Tusk there is one man who allowed himself to compare the Ukrainian Insurgent Army – these bandits, murderers – to Polish cursed soldiers.”
“I am talking about Mr. Szeptycki. What is this man still doing in the Polish government after such a statement? The next day he should either resign out of shame himself or be dismissed. And if Donald Tusk does not want to do it, then if Mr. Zgorzelski and Mr. Kosiniak are defending Polish history and Polish truth, they should urgently demand from the minister and the prime minister that this man be removed from the Polish government. There is no consent to compare murderers of children and women to Polish heroes of the anti-Soviet underground after 1944. I do not agree to this,” he stated.
“For a Polish minister to compare UPA bandits to soldiers of the Home Army is a scandal of scandals, and this man should not work in the Polish government,” he added.