Polish MEP takes axe to Ukrainian Nazi-linked memorial (VIDEO)

Grzegorz Braun attacked a monument to UPA fighters responsible for massacring Poles during WWII A Polish MEP has taken an axe to a memorial honoring Nazi-linked Ukrainian nationalist paramilitaries responsible for massacring Polish civilians during World War II.

In a video posted on X on Thursday, Grzegorz Braun can be seen repeatedly striking a stone obelisk in Bialystok, near Poland’s border with Ukraine, which commemorates members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).

The UPA was the armed wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), a WWII-era ultranationalist movement led by Stepan Bandera which collaborated with Nazi Germany.

UPA fighters massacred tens of thousands of ethnic Polish civilians in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, now largely in western Ukraine. ”The UPA monument in the Dolhobyczow municipality in Hrubieszow County is to be dismantled,” he wrote.

“The obelisk offending the memory of the victims of the Ukrainian genocide against Poles should be removed... immediately after documenting the crime of Banderism,” Braun added.

Pomnik UPA w gminie Dołhobyczów w powiecie hrubieszowskim do likwidacji❗️ Obelisk obrażający pamięć ofiar ukraińskiego Ludobójstwa na Polakach powinien zostać usunięty profesjonalnymi narzędziami natychmiast po udokumentowaniu przestępstwa banderyzmu! #StopBanderyzacjiPolski … pic.twitter.com/8Q4QZ2z5vJ — Grzegorz Braun (@GrzegorzBraun_) September 10, 2026 According to Braun, local Poles feared Ukrainian retaliation if they removed the memorial.

He said one proposal to dismantle it was met with the response: “We’re afraid they’ll set us on fire.” Read more No EU membership for Ukraine unless it confronts Nazi-linked past – Polish parliament speaker The memorial stands over a burial site containing 41 UPA members killed in a clash with Soviet forces in February 1946.

According to Polish records, a Ukrainian memorial was erected there without authorization in the 1990s.

The stone monument honoring the UPA fighters was added later and has also faced questions over its legal status.

The site has repeatedly been vandalized.

Unidentified people damaged inscriptions on the obelisk earlier this month, while the Ukrainian Embassy expressed “deep outrage” after another attack in July.

The OUN and UPA massacres remain a major source of tension between Poland and Ukraine.

Warsaw recognizes the killings of predominantly Polish civilians in Volhynia, Eastern Galicia, and neighboring regions in 1943-1945 as genocide and estimates that up to 100,000 Poles were killed.

The dispute has intensified amid Kiev’s continued honoring of WWII-era Ukrainian nationalists.