In major breakthrough, Poland and Ukraine agree to exhume victims of Volhynia massacre

ADVERTISEMENT

The decision to exhume the bodies of the victims of the Volhynia massacre has been made, according to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

“Finally, a breakthrough. A decision has been made regarding the first exhumations of the 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”, Mr Tusk wrote in a post on X.

In 1943, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) carried out a series of massacres in the Volhynia and Eastern Galicia regions of what was then German-occupied Poland, resulting in the deaths of approximately 100,000 Polish civilians. People of other ethnicities were also massacred, including Armenians, Jews, Russians, Czechs and Georgians, according to historians.

The UPA was a Ukrainian paramilitary force which, in the name of overthrowing Soviet rule over Ukraine, collaborated with Nazi Germany.

This tragedy has long been a important and painful subject of contention between the two countries, causing friction between otherwise close allies. While Poland officially recognizes the massacre as a genocide, Ukraine disputes this qualification, considering that it is a conflict in which both parties are responsible. Ukrainian officials said the UPA and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) were part of the resistance against the communist Soviet Union.

Many people in Poland have advocated for the exhumation of the approximately 55,000 Polish and 10,000 Jewish victims who, according to the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), “still lie in grave graves in Volhynia, waiting to be found, exhumed and buried.

Blockages on Ukraine’s European route

In June last year, Polish Deputy Prime Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said in an interview with the Polsat channel that “Ukraine will not join the European Union if the issue of Volhynia is not resolved resolved.”

“We want Ukraine to develop, but we cannot leave unhealed a wound that has not been healed,” he said in the interview. “Issues relating to the genocide in Volhynia remain unresolved.”

This week, Karol Nawrocki, a presidential candidate backed by the conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, made a similar statement.

“Currently, I do not envisage Ukraine’s participation in the European Union or NATO until important civilizational issues for Poland have been resolved,” said Mr. Nawrocki, who is currently at the head of the Institute of National Memory (INR).

The INR is a public research organization responsible for investigating and archiving crimes committed against Poland during World War II and the communist period that followed.

“A country that is not capable of accounting for a very brutal crime committed against 120,000 of its neighbors cannot be part of international alliances,” Mr. Nawrocki added.

Responding to Mr Tusk’s announcement on X, Mr Nawrocki said that if confirmed, the news of the exhumations was “great news”. “We are waiting for official information and we are starting to fulfill our obligations towards Poland.”

Bilateral efforts to ease tensions

The most recent iteration of the dispute began in 2017, when Ukraine issued a ban on the search and exhumation of Polish victims on its territory, following the removal of a monument to the UPA in Hruszowice in Poland.

Since then, efforts have been made by both countries to ease these tensions and overcome these historical traumas.

In July 2023, Presidents Andrzej Duda and Volodymyr Zelensky celebrated together the 80th anniversary of the massacres during a memorial mass in Lutsk, northwest Ukraine.

During the ceremony, the two leaders walked side by side, recognizing the common trauma that took place in the region.

However, according to an opinion poll conducted by the Mieroszewski Center, the percentage of Ukrainians with a good opinion of Poles fell from 67% to 44.5% over the past year. When asked to identify the causes of discord between the two countries, 26% of respondents blamed the grain crisis and border blockades, while 19% attributed current tensions to the Volhynian massacres.

Officials on both sides hope that Mr. Tusk’s announcement and a formal agreement on the exhumations will help ease tensions and end sour relations.

“We respect each other and together we oppose Russian imperialism,” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha wrote on X following Tusk’s announcement.