And from Poland:
Poland's Parliament Declares Volyn Massacres ‘Genocide,' Ukraine Laments Move
By RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service
Poland’s lower house of parliament, the Sejm, has voted to declare World War II-era killings committed by Ukrainian nationalists against Polish civilians “genocide” in a move that could provoke tensions between the two neighbors.
Kyiv, which rejects the genocide label for the crimes, reacted cautiously, with President Petro Poroshenko expressing "regret" over Warsaw's move.
Poroshenko cautioned that the resolution could be used against his country. Ukraine has been embroiled in a conflict with Russia-backed separatists that has claimed more than 9,400 lives since April 2014.
Poroshenko also called for reconciliation and forgiveness between the two nations.
The move by the right-wing-dominated Sejm reverses a 2013 decision led by liberal lawmakers that stopped short of calling the killings of tens of thousands Poles by Ukrainian nationalists a genocide.
“The victims of the crimes committed in the 1940s by Ukrainian nationalists were not duly commemorated, and the mass murder was not defined as genocide in accordance with the historical truth," reads the Sejm resolution, which was adopted by a 432-1 vote with one abstention.
Historians say that in 1943-44 members of the paramilitary Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) massacred between 35,000-60,000 Polish civilians, including many children, women, and elderly in the Volyn region of what is now northwest Ukraine, known in Polish as Wolyn.
The UPA's main objective was said to have been to win Ukrainian independence by ousting Nazi and later Soviet occupiers and to clear Poles from territories that were historically Ukrainian land.
The killings provoked bloody reprisals by Polish partisans grouped in the anti-Nazi and anti-Soviet Home Army (AK). They killed an estimated 20,000 Ukrainians.
None of the massacres was officially acknowledged under communism, but they have remained a painful part of Poland’s national consciousness.
The Sejm resolution also recognizes Polish crimes, saying: "Nor can one dismiss or downplay acts of Polish revenge on Ukrainian villages, during which civilian populations also perished."
"I'm sorry to hear about the decision of the Polish Sejm. I know that many will seek to use it for political speculations,” Poroshenko wrote on Facebook.
“However, we must return to the commandments of [Pope] John Paul II -- forgive and ask for forgiveness. Only by joint steps can we achieve Christian reconciliation and unity. Only together can we clarify all the facts of the tragic pages of our common history."
Andriy Deshchytsia, Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland, also said he regrets that "preference was given to a unilateral assessment of political events, rather than professional or even international Ukrainian-Polish expert research and relevant legal conclusions about what happened."
Poland has been a strong backer of Ukraine’s independence and democracy, and has been a Western counterbalance to Russia’s influence.
Warsaw has also supported closer ties between the European Union and Kyiv.
Occasionally, controversies from their shared history have resurfaced between the two neighbors, who share a 500 kilometer border, though without a major impact on bilateral relations.
In 2013, the liberal government adopted a softer version of the resolution to maintain amicable relations with Ukraine, which was moving closer to the European Union.
The 2013 referred to the war-time mass-murders as "ethnic cleansing characterized by signs of genocide.”
But Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Poland's powerful leader of the governing right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiS), has long pushed for the killings to be labeled genocide.
Kaczynski holds no government post but is widely regarded as Poland’s real powerbroker.
The PiS gained won a clear victory in October’s parliamentary elections on an antimigrant populist platform, handing a heavy defeat to the liberal Civic Platform.
Big news from yesterday:
By RFE/RL
Nadia Savchenko, the Ukrainian military officer who became a national hero after spending nearly two years in a Russian prison, called for reconciliation to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine, sparking outrage among some lawmakers.
Savchenko, who was elected to parliament while in prison, said in an interview broadcast July 21 on Ukraine’s Channel Five that Ukrainians must “ask for forgiveness.” Otherwise, she said, the violence that has gripped the country’s Donbas region since April 2014 would continue.
Her comments infuriated nationalist lawmakers and others, including Anton Herashchenko who also serves as an aide to the Interior Ministry.
“You, Nadia, are able to ask for forgiveness of …. Russians who came to our lands to kill and rape, but we will never ask forgiveness of the occupiers and terrorists,” he wrote on his Facebook page. “We will, through clenched teeth, hold on and achieve the emancipation of our lands by any means!”
Savchenko, who worked with a Ukrainian military air unit, was captured in June 2014, and put on trial in Russia, charged with the killing of two Russian reporters covering the war.
Freed in May as part of a prisoner swap, she returned to a hero's welcome, and has spoken out regularly, calling for direct peace talks with Russia-backed separatists in the east.
More than 9,400 people have been killed in the fighting, according to United Nations figures.
Good morning.
Reupping Christopher Miller's excellent profile of Nadia Savchenko:
Thousands Stand In Line To Mourn Slain Journalist Pavel Sheremet In Kyiv
By Christopher Miller
KYIV -- Thousands of mourners strode in a solemn procession through Kyiv’s Ukrainian House on July 22 to honor journalist Pavel Sheremet, who was killed in a car bombing that has shaken Ukraine’s media community and sent shock waves into Russia and Belarus.
Sheremet, a journalist at news website Ukrayinska Pravda, was driving to a radio station to do a morning show two days earlier when the bomb exploded. The Interior Ministry said the explosives were “skillfully” planted underneath the car and that the blast may have been set off by a “remote-controlled or delayed-action” detonator.
Surveillance footage showing what media reports said was the placement of a bomb under the car the night before the blast was posted on the Internet, but there was no word on suspects or a specific motive. Colleagues believe Sheremet was targeted for his work as a journalist.
Europol and the FBI are assisting Ukraine in investigating Sheremet’s slaying.
“We never thought something like this would happen,” Nataliya Humenyuk, co-founder of the independent Hromadske.tv channel and a friend of Sheremet, told RFE/RL as she stood beneath a giant photograph of him smiling and flashing a peace sign.
Most of those paying their last respects to Sheremet were Ukrainians, but there were also Russian and Belarusian citizens in attendance. The 44-year-old had previously worked in Russia and his native Belarus, where he faced pressure from the authorities for his reporting.
Mourners included family, friends, colleagues, lawmakers, and government officials, among them President Petro Poroshenko. Members of Ukraine’s military and volunteer battalions set up to fight against Russia-backed separatists in the east also came out to bid him farewell.
Some carried carnations of yellow and blue -- Ukraine’s national colors. Others brought red and white roses. Mourners brought the flowers in even numbers, as is customary for grieving and funerals, and mounds of them spilled off a table.
Tears flowed as people approached Sheremet’s open casket. Many stopped momentarily to cross themselves and say a little prayer. Some laid a gentle hand atop the coffin. They choked up as they looked down at the body of the journalist, dressed in a dark suit and tie and resting atop a bed of red and white roses.
Before walking away, mourners embraced Sheremet’s longtime partner and colleague, Ukraynska Pravda editor Olena Prytula, and whispered their condolences in her ear. Prytula was accompanied by members of Sheremet’s family and close friends.
Nearby, a candle flickered beside a bunch of golden sunflowers and a black-and-white photograph of Sheremet smiling. A digital screen played a slideshow of scenes from his life: speaking at a protest in Minsk in the 1990s before a poster of a scowling President Alyaksandr Lukashenka; looking over the shoulder of a colleague typing away in one of the many newsrooms he worked in over the years; wearing a wide smile and curly wig at a costume party; strumming a guitar.
Addressing mourners, lawmaker and former journalist Mustafa Nayyem said that Sheremet’s legacy would live on despite his death.
“He will always be with us,” he said.
Anatoliy Hrytsenko, an independent member of parliament and former defense minister, recalled Sheremet as a “brave and honest man.” He said his killing was a “terrorist act” and the investigation into the crime would be a “test” for Ukrainian law enforcement and, in particular, Interior Ministry Arsen Avakov.
Because the car Sheremet was driving belonged to Prytula, law enforcement are investigating the possibility that she was the target of the attack, among other theories. She has been provided a security detail for protection.
But the ZN.ua and Ukrayinska Pravda news sites cited an unidentified law-enforcement source as saying, based on a preliminary examination of the evidence, that Sheremet appears to have been the intended target of the bombing.
The source told the news outlets that a surveillance camera near the home of Sheremet and Prytula recorded the moment an unidentified person placed an explosive device under Prytula’s car the night before the blast.
A blurry video posted on the Internet later on July 22 shows at least two figures, one possibly female, walking near parked cars with what looks like a suitcase. One figure appears to lean over a car.
Sheremet drove Prytula’s car to the Radio Vesti office at the same time each morning five days a week, a routine that was likely known to attackers, the ZN.ua and Ukrayinska Pravda reports cited the source as saying.
The source also said that an examination of the remains of the car, as well as an autopsy of Sheremet’s body, indicate that the bomb was intended solely to target the driver.
“If the blast of the explosion had gone downward, it would have been essentially extinguished in the ground, but it blew upward and to the left,” the source was quoted as saying. “This was an attack meant exclusively for the victim of the killing.”
An autopsy showed that Sheremet suffered “incompatible with life,” the source said. He died because of a “rapid and critical” loss of blood in about one to two minutes.
Sheremet's body was to be repatriated to Belarus, where a funeral service will be held in the capital, Minsk, on July 23. Sheremet will be laid to rest beside his father.
Night Fighting In Eastern Ukraine
Ukrainian government forces and Russia-backed separatists exchanged mortar and machine-gun fire for two hours, amid a sharp increase in fighting. (RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service)
Here is today's map of the security situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council (CLICK TO ENLARGE):
