Exhumation of the remains of the victims of the Volyn tragedy: Ukraine has given the “green light”
11 January 00:44
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has announced that a decision has been made to exhume the first Polish victims of the Volyn tragedy. This was reported by the Ministry of Culture of Poland and stated in Tusk’s message on X (Twitter), Komersant ukrainskyi reports
Tusk thanked the ministers of culture of Poland and Ukraine for their cooperation and expressed hope for further similar decisions.
“Finally, a breakthrough. A decision has been made on the first exhumations of Polish victims of the UPA. I would like to thank the Ministers of Culture of Poland and Ukraine for their good cooperation. We are waiting for further decisions,” the Polish prime minister said.
He did not specify when the process of exhumation would begin.
Shortly before that, Ukraine’s Minister of National Unity Oleksiy Chernyshov visited Poland and met with Polish Minister of Culture Hanna Wróblewska. The ministers discussed the key role of culture in preserving national identity, as well as the impact of culture on the socio-economic development of both countries, the Polish Ministry of Culture said.
Earlier, Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Pawel Wronski added that the exhumation could begin in the spring of 2025.
“Ukraine confirms that there are no obstacles for Polish state institutions and individuals to carry out search and exhumation work on the territory of Ukraine in cooperation with competent Ukrainian institutions, in accordance with Ukrainian legislation, and declares its readiness to positively consider requests in these cases,” the statement said.
It should be noted that in November it became known that Ukraine and Poland had agreed to exhume the victims of the Volyn tragedy.
Prior to that, the Polish Foreign Ministry stated that until Ukraine resolves the issue of exhuming the remains of the victims of the Volyn tragedy, Kyiv “has no reason to dream of joining the EU.”
What preceded the decision to resume exhumation
As a reminder, since 2017, Ukraine has banned the exhumation of the remains of Polish victims of the Volyn tragedy, a decision made in response to the demolition of the UPA monument in Hruszowice in the Polish Subcarpathian region. However, in 2019, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy authorized search operations in Lviv.
Ukraine issued subsequent permits for the exhumation of Poles against the backdrop of the Polish side’s restoration of the damaged grave of UPA soldiers in Monastyr in January 2020. However, Poland did not restore the list of names of UPA soldiers who died in battles with the Soviet NKVD on the grave.
What is known about the Volyn tragedy
The Volyn tragedy is a bilateral massacre of the Polish and Ukrainian population in Volyn during World War II. Poland claims 100 thousand local Poles died, but according to various historians, the number of victims ranges from 30 to 70 thousand.
At the same time, the number of Ukrainians killed during the Volyn War ranges from 5 to 20 thousand.
Poland calls the killings “genocide.” However, Ukraine interprets them as a “tragedy” and calls for mutual apologies, interethnic forgiveness, and reconciliation.
Domestic researchers point out that it is impossible to talk about the Volyn tragedy outside the historical context – the policy of polonization of Ukrainian lands, the social and national oppression of the Polish authorities against the Ukrainian population, the policy of “appeasement,” which was in fact the terror of the Polish state against the awakened Ukrainians in the Second Polish Republic. And the context of 1943 itself is especially important: the attempts of the Home Army and the Polish emigrant government to secure Volyn’s Polish affiliation at any cost.
Moreover, in the opinion of the Ukrainian side, the Volyn tragedy cannot be considered separately from Poland’s repressions against its Ukrainian population, in particular, Operation Vistula, the forced expulsion of Ukrainians from their own lands of Lemkivshchyna, Posyannya, Podlasie, and Kholmshchyna, which has all the hallmarks of ethnocide.
