Poland today declared “persona non grata” a member of the Ukrainian regional government of Lviv, Sviatoslav Sheremeta, banishing him from the Schengen area for five years for participating in tributes to a historical figure associated with the Nazi regime.
© Getty Images
21/10/2026
by
Lusa
Sviatoslav Sheremeta
A Poland declared today ‘persona non grata’ a member of the Ukrainian regional government of Lviv, Sviatoslav Sheremeta, banishing him from the Schengen area for five years, for having participated in tributes to a historical figure that Warsaw associates with the Nazi regime.
“ At the request of Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, S. Sheremeta was included in the register of undesirable persons, with a ban on entry and residence in the Schengen countries for five years, until 20 October 2031,” wrote Polish Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński on social network X.
Poland associates the UPA and its leaders with the massacres in Volínia in 1943, in which some 100,000 Poles died and classified by Warsaw as genocide.
While in Ukraine, the UPA is valued as a symbol of the struggle for independence and anti-Soviet resistance, on Polish soil it brings indignation to its historical figures.
Today's decision comes after Sikorski condemned Sheremeta for promoting 2027 as the “Year of Roman Shukhevych”, commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) which ordered the forced displacement and mass murder of Poles during World War II.
On Wednesday, Sikorski classified the UPA leader as “Waffen-SS builder” — in a reference to the Nazi troops occupying Poland.
Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz considered the Ukrainian decision “unacceptable”, stating that “it does not build mutual trust among peoples, but, on the contrary, strengthens divisions”.
Poland had already banned Sheremeta’s entry in 2017, after the Ukrainian state department that directed, responsible for the searches and memorials, blocked the Polish search and exhumation of UPA victims in mass graves in different parts of Ukraine.