Polish President Karol Nawrocki has asked Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zielenski to start large-scale exhumations of victims of the Volyn tragedy.
“Once again, Mr Ambassador, as the newly elected president, I would like to formally address Your Excellency and President Zielenski regarding the possibility of full-scale exhumations in Volyn. Poles are waiting for this truth and Volhynian families are still suffering from the trauma that occurred 82 years ago,” he said on RMF24.
Nawrocki said the victims of the Volyn tragedy “call for a cross, a grave and remembrance”.
“As the future president of Poland, I am obliged to speak in their voice. No one will exempt me from this. Poles are waiting for this truth,” Nawrocki added.
According to Poland’s newly elected president, the exhumation is necessary for Poland and Ukraine to “really reconcile.”
Poland calls the victims in Ternopil region victims of the “Volyn massacre”. In Ukraine, historians say they are victims of the Polish-Ukrainian armed conflict during World War II. The Volyn events began at the turn of 1942-1943, when the first attacks and killings of Poles were recorded, and ended in the autumn of 1944.
It became known at the beginning of the year that exhumation works on the victims of the Volyn tragedy would start in April on the territory of the former village of Puzhniki. This was reported by the Freedom and Democracy Foundation. This organisation found the specified burial site two years ago.
During a briefing in Rzeszów, the chairman of the Polish Sejm Foreign Affairs Commission, Pawel Kowal, called the exhumation work in Puzhniki in Ternopil Region a “breakthrough” in Ukrainian-Polish relations.
Earlier, Ukraine and Poland exchanged lists of places for searching and exhuming the remains of “victims of mutual historical conflicts”.
The Ukrainian side also allowed Poland to carry out exhumation works in the village of Ugly in Rivne region and in Lviv.