MFA denies spokesman's suspension

Poland's foreign ministry denied on Tuesday media reports claiming that its spokesperson has been suspended after demanding an apology from Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky for the murder of thousands of Poles by Ukrainian nationalists in Volhynia during the Second World War.

"MFA spokesman Lukasz Jasina is currently on planned leave," the Polish Foreign Ministry announced on Twitter on Tuesday night.

"The information about his alleged suspension from official duties is not true," the ministry added.

The information that Jasina had been suspended and was on indefinite leave, from which he would probably not return, was unofficially reported on Tuesday afternoon by a journalist from the private radio broadcaster RMF FM.

His alleged suspension is apparently linked to a May 19 interview Jasina gave to the news website Onet.pl. When asked whether Zelensky should apologise for Volhynia, Jasina said: "This was not done by the state of Ukraine, but President Zelensky should take more responsibility for it."

In the years 1943-44, around 100,000 Poles were slaughtered by Ukraine's ultranationalist organization, the OUN, in the Volhynia and Eastern Galicia regions of pre-war eastern Poland (today part of western Ukraine).