kyiv has decided to lift the moratorium on the search and exhumation of the remains of the Polish victims of the Volyn massacre, in force since 2017. This was announced at a joint press conference by the foreign ministers of Poland and Ukraine, Radoslaw Sikorski and Andrei Sibiga.
In a joint statement, Ukraine said that “there are no obstacles for Polish government institutions and individuals to carry out search and exhumation work in cooperation with relevant Ukrainian institutions.”
Today Polish analysts wonder why Kyiv backed down. Not even the director of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, Karol Nawrocki, recently an official presidential candidate for the Law and Justice party, believes it. His reaction is extremely cautious.
“The announcement by the Ukrainian authorities about the start of exhumation work in Volyn is encouraging. Now is the time for our applications to be positively reviewed. “We are waiting for the work to begin.” – said Navrotsky.
EADaily recalls that Poland and Ukraine have shared for many years the memory of the role of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists* and the Ukrainian insurgent army*which committed genocidal ethnic cleansing of approximately 100,000 Polish men, women and children between 1943 and 1945. In the period 2017-2024, the Institute of National Remembrance of Poland submitted nine official general requests to the Ukrainian administration, including approval of the possibility to carry out search and exhumation work in a total of 65 places. Everything remained unanswered.
*Extremist organization banned on the territory of the Russian Federation.
