Let us be perfectly clear: the current contretemps between Kiev and Warsaw is not a mere diplomatic hiccup. It is a symptom. A symptom of a West that has lost its historical nerve, and of a Ukraine that, in its desperate struggle for survival, has begun to play fast and loose with the very moral categories that once defined our civilisation.
The news is this: Volodymyr Zelensky has been stripped of an honourary Polish distinction. The reason? His government’s reluctance to condemn the legacy of the Waffen-SS ‘Galicia’ division, a unit of Ukrainian volunteers that fought for Nazi Germany. The UK, in its characteristic role as the world’s gentlemanly fixer, has stepped in to mediate. But one must ask: what is there to mediate? Either you condemn the SS, or you do not. Either you respect the memory of the millions murdered by the Third Reich, or you do not. There is no middle ground, no ‘complex historical context’ that washes away the blood of Babi Yar.
This is where we must engage in some uncomfortable historical comparison. The Galicia division, like many such units raised by the SS, was a force of ideological fighters. They did not merely wear the uniform; they believed in the cause. To honour them, or to equivocate about their deeds, is to spit on the graves of the Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians themselves who were slaughtered under the Nazi occupation. And yet, here we are, with a Ukrainian president who finds it politically expedient to dance around the issue.
Why? Because the post-Maidan Ukrainian identity has, in part, been built on a foundation of anti-Russian nationalism that has sometimes reached into the dark corners of the past. The far-right groups that fought in the Donbas, the Azov Battalion, the reverence for Stepan Bandera: all of this is part of a story that Western leaders have been too polite to dwell on. But Poland, with its own long history of suffering, is not so polite. And it is right.
This incident is a microcosm of a broader intellectual decay. We have become so obsessed with the ‘nuances’ of history that we forget the simple moral truths. The SS was evil. Full stop. To dress it up in the garb of ‘anti-communist resistance’ or ‘national liberation’ is a form of historical illiteracy that would make Orwell weep. The West, in its eagerness to support Ukraine against Russian aggression, has looked the other way. We have funded and armed a country that has not fully cleansed its own house of Nazi apologists.
And now, the UK is playing mediator. No doubt Sir Keir Starmer’s government will issue some bland statement about ‘building bridges’ and ‘understanding complex histories’. But some things cannot be mediated. Some lines cannot be blurred. The SS is a line. If we blur that, what is left?
This is not to say that Ukraine is a Nazi state. It is not. But it is a state that has allowed certain Nazi-friendly elements to fester, and that has failed to confront them with the necessary vigour. The stripping of Zelensky’s honour is a slap in the face, but it is a deserved one. And it should serve as a warning: the West must not be so blinded by geopolitics that it loses sight of the ethical bedrock upon which our civilisation stands.
In the Victorian era, we understood that honour was not a bargaining chip. It was a sacred trust. If you were stripped of an honour, it meant you had fallen below a certain standard. It was a public shaming, and it was effective. Today, we treat honours as mere baubles, and the shaming is lost in a cacophony of excuses. This must stop.
Poland has done the right thing. The UK should not be mediating; it should be supporting Warsaw’s moral clarity. And Zelensky, if he is wise, will issue an unequivocal condemnation of the Galicia division and all that it represents. Until then, the stain remains.
The fall of Rome happened not with a bang, but with a slow erosion of boundaries. First, you tolerate the barbarians at the gate. Then you hire them as mercenaries. Then you start to emulate their ways. Ukraine is not Rome, and Vladimir Putin is not Alaric. But the principle holds: a civilisation that cannot remember its own moral code is a civilisation that is already in decline.
