June 24, 2024
Courtesy of The Warsaw Voice [Website: https://www.warsawvoice.pl/]
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenski has unexpectedly dismissed Vasyl Zvarych from his post as Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland.
According to published documents, Zvarych will leave Poland to take up the post of Ukrainian ambassador to the Czech Republic. The Ukrainian diplomatic post there has been without a head for two years.
Zvarych, 47, was appointed Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland in February 2022, even before Russia launched its invasion; he submitted his letters of credence a few months later, in July. He is a graduate of a university in Lviv, and had been affiliated with Ukraine’s foreign ministry since 1999. Before becoming ambassador to Poland, he was first secretary and deputy head of the mission in Warsaw.
For now, there is no information on who will replace Zvarych as ambassador to Poland. There is also no comment from the Ukrainian Embassy or Zvarych himself on the decision on the post of head of the post in Warsaw.
The former ambassador has already had controversial episodes in his career in Warsaw. In May 2023, in response to the words of then-MFA spokesman Lukasz Jasina that Volodymyr Zvolenski should apologize over the Volhynian Massacre, he stated that "any attempt to impose on the Ukrainian president or Ukraine what we must on the common past is unacceptable." "We call for respect vs. balance in statements, especially in the difficult reality of genocidal Russian aggression," he added, including a quote from the phrase "we forgive and ask for forgiveness." The ambassador’s entry triggered a wave of negative comments, including from former Foreign Ministry head Witold Waszczykowski, who said Ukrainians "don’t want to make any gestures to Poland and that’s a problem." Zvarych later deleted the post.
In September 2023, the Ukrainian ambassador was urgently summoned to the Foreign Ministry: the Polish side handed him a "strong protest" against the Ukrainian president’s statement at the UN General Assembly that "part of the EU countries are posing as solidarity, while indirectly supporting Russia." "In relation to Poland, this thesis is untrue and, moreover, particularly unjustified in relation to a country assisting Ukraine since the first days of the war," the Foreign Ministry wrote at the time.
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