Polish leader vows to use EU presidency to speed up Ukraine's membership quest

WARSAW, Poland — Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk vowed on Wednesday to use his country's presidency of the European Union to push forward with Ukraine's membership quest as the two sides reported progress in recent days on a major irritant in their relations.

''We will break the standstill we have in this issue,'' Tusk told reporters in Warsaw, as he stood alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. ''We will accelerate the accession process.''

Poland now holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, the 27-member bloc that Ukraine aspires to join, and Warsaw will have the influence to put the issue high on the agenda for the next half year.

Zelenskyy was in Poland on Wednesday after the two countries reached an agreement under which Ukraine will allow the exhumation of some Polish victims of World War II-era massacres by Ukrainian nationalists, a longstanding source of tensions.

Zelenskyy's visit came just days after Tusk announced progress on starting exhumations.

Although Poland has been one of Ukraine's most stalwart supporters since Russia's full-scale invasion nearly three years ago, the issue of the Polish victims lying in mass graves in the Ukrainian region of Volhynia eight decades after they were brutally killed has left a festering bitterness among many Poles.

Tusk, in power for more than a year, faces domestic pressure to show progress on an issue of continued importance to many people in Poland. It is particularly important as his party's candidate in a presidential election in May is expected to face a strong challenge from a nationalist opposition candidate.

''We will help Ukraine, but we will also look after our national interests and this is obvious to both sides,'' Tusk said.

Zelenskyy noted that the ministries of culture were already working on the details.

''I believe we must move forward together with Poland. We are neighbors, and Russia is the main threat. This threat exists today, it will exist tomorrow, and we must do everything to strengthen our alliance''.

A pro-EU centrist, Tusk has been working for some time to embrace an inclusive form of patriotism — part of an effort to prevent nationalist conservatives from presenting themselves as the leading advocates of Poland's interests.

Western Ukraine was once under Polish rule, with Ukrainians largely subservient to a Polish landowning class.

Entire villages were burned down, their inhabitants killed by the nationalists and their supporters who were seeking to establish an independent Ukraine state.

Thousands of Ukrainians were killed in retaliation.

Poland in 2016 declared the massacres to be genocide, which led Ukraine to block exhumations. Poland has in recent years been asking Ukraine to let Polish authorities exhume the victims to give them proper burials.

The issue is sensitive for Ukraine. Some of the World War II-era Ukrainian nationalists are today regarded as national heroes because of their struggle for Ukraine's statehood.

A nongovernmental organization, the Freedom and Democracy Foundation, said Monday that it would begin exhumation work on victims in Ukraine in April.