2024-11-26 21:36 update: 2024-11-26, 21:40
Fot. PAP/Tomasz Gzell
Radoslaw Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister, has confirmed that mutual agreement was reached with Ukraine on the exhumations of Polish victims killed by Ukrainian nationalists during World War Two.
Ukraine confirmed that there were no obstacles to conducting searches and exhumations of the graves on its territory, Sikorski said at a press conference on Tuesday after a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart Andrii Sybiha.
Both ministers said it was a mutually agreed-upon statement.
Sikorski added that "the exhumations need to be according to the Ukrainian laws, and (the Ukrainian government - PAP) declares its readiness to a positive examination of applications in the matter."
"We are working with Polish and Ukrainian ministries of culture on the practical mechanisms of carrying out the search and exhumation works," said Sybiha.
In 1943-1945, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) carried out ethnic cleansing of some 100,000 Polish men, women and children in Volhynia, a historic eastern region of Poland which today is part of Ukraine. Poland and Ukraine both recognise the crime, which earned the name 'Volhynia Massacre,' but dispute the motivations behind the killings. While Poland claims the massacre was an act of genocide, Ukraine argues that it was part of a broader conflict for which both sides are responsible.
Although at a slow pace, the exhumations were carried out until 2017, when Ukraine halted all the works after a monument to the UPA was dismantled in Hruszowice, southeastern Poland. (PAP)
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