I'm guessing Poland and Ukraine go way back

[captain queeg]

My mom’s maiden name was Zielinski, at least that’s how it’s spelled in old documents. Both her parents came to the US from Poland in the early 1900s. So I guess that might be a common name in both countries. Both countries suffered under the soviets (and the Nazis). Many Ukrainians joined with the Nazis during WWII. That ought to indicate how bad they’d been treated by the Soviet Union.

[SheltieLover]

1. This is why Ukranians will fight to the death! No more russian bs!

🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦

[RockRaven]

2. Here are two centuries-long examples of modern day Poland and Ukraine

-- or at least parts of them -- being part of the same state:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duchy_of_Lithuania
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_of_the_Kingdom_of_Poland

[BootinUp]

3. The way Ukraines neighbors are pitching in is really heart warming

They have been there before yes. The similarity in names you mention is also very interesting. I don't know too much history about Ukraine and the Nazis.

I am waiting to see Russia buckle now. I can't imagine he will be able to keep his military together for too long with a decimated economy. I give it 60 days before they cry uncle and his forces start abandoning the effort.

[El Supremo]

4. Not really.

Ukraine has been dominated in history by Poland and Russia. Poland has been Roman Catholic and Russian and Ukraine are Orthodox. I think there has been more animosity toward the Poles.

[Retrograde]

5. Eastern European history gets complicated

Parts of Ukraine were part of Poland until c. 1945, when Stalin shifted the borders. And Poland itself was carved out of Germany, Russia, and the Austrian Empire back in 1918 - only fair since they partitioned it amongst themselves in the 18th century. And Poland and Ukraine were once a rather large and important country before that, sometimes including Lithuania. Stalin also liked to move people around, and sent a lot of ethnic Poles from Ukraine to Poland in the 1940s (he also moved most of the Chechens in Ukraine to other parts of the USSR, but that's a whole other can of worms)

Zielinski is a common Polish name - it means something like "Green". Ukrainian and Polish are related languages and native speakers are often mutually comprehensible (at least my grandmother, whose first language was Polish, could understand Ukranians and Russians)

[captain queeg]

6. Thanks. Hadn't heard that.

[John1956PA]

7. At times, there was war and animosity between Poles and Ukrainians.

Here is a link to a page regarding the Polish-Ukrainian War which occurred just over a century ago:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Ukrainian_War

[roamer65]

8. L'viv used to be a Polish city.

[DFW]

9. The border has shifted many times throughout history

Linguistically, Polish and Ukrainian are very close. A Russian would have to learn some Polish to be able to understand it without some translation. A Ukrainian would not.

Many Ukrainians at first welcomed the Germans as liberators from Stalin’s catastrophic rule. Only when the Nazis started killing off Ukrainians did things turn back the other way. The Nazis, with their fanatic “racial superiority” doctrine, exhibited unspeakable cruelty against the very people that would have helped them against Stalin. Hardly anyone ever accused the Nazis of going about their invasion of the Soviet Union in a clever, well thought-out manner.

[captain queeg]

10. Yes that was one of Hitler's biggest mistakes

Even if he planned on doing so he should have waited till after he won, which he might have if he used the populations that hated Stalin.

[JoanofArgh]

11. Part of Ukraine, like Lviv ,was Polish territory at one time and part of it , Galicia , was

in the Austro-Hungarian/ Hapsburg empire.

[ironflange]

12. My family comes from Galicia, close to Lviv

Part of Poland between the wars, so they were unaffected by Stalin's famine.

[Tommy Carcetti]

13. Through good and bad.

There were past instances of wars and acts of mass violence traded between each other over the centuries.

On the other hand areas of Western Ukraine were at times under Polish control and there is a ethnic mix in that area.

What's important now is that whatever differences the two once had are in the past in the face of a common enemy in Russia. And as someone with both Ukrainian and Polish roots, that makes me happy.

[Torchlight]

14. Dating from the end of the Hapsburg Empire

a particular factory in SE Poland has been, at different times, under the governance of different nations thirteen times.