2024-10-02 15:22 update: 2024-10-02, 15:29
Photo PAP/Vitaliy Hrabar
The Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance (UINP) has announced plans for 2025 to conduct searches for the remains of individuals who fell victim to the mass executions carried out by Ukrainian nationalists in the then eastern Polish region of Volhynia, which was under Nazi occupation at the time.
The decision follows a number of requests from Polish citizens seeking to locate and exhume the bodies of their family members killed during the tragedy, the UINP wrote in a statement on Tuesday. "In particular, we received a request to conduct such work in the Rivne region," it said.
"After reviewing the application received in September 2024, the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance intends to include search work in the Rivne region in its work plan and events for 2025," the statement read.
The UINP's decision is a significant step towards addressing the tragic events of the Volhynia massacre and fostering reconciliation between Ukraine and Poland.
While Warsaw views these tragic events as genocide and ethnic cleansing, Kyiv often disputes this interpretation. According to Poland's Institute of National Remembrance, between 1943-44, around 100,000 Poles were slaughtered by the ultra-nationalist Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in the Volhynia and Eastern Galicia regions of pre-war eastern Poland (today part of western Ukraine).
In the spring of 2017, Ukraine banned all exhumations of Volhynia massacre victims carried out by Poland in Ukraine following the removal of a memorial to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in Hruszowice, south-eastern Poland. (PAP)
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