"Ukraine confirms that there are no obstacles to Polish state institutions and private entities in cooperation with the competent Ukrainian institutions to carry out search and exhumation work in the territory of Ukraine" - the Communication stated after the gathering of Polish and Ukrainian abroad ministers. The rules for cooperation in this area are to be drawn up by a peculiar working group.
Monument to the Victims of Genocide made by Ukrainian nationalists on the citizens of the Second Republic in the south-eastern provinces from 1942 to 1947. photograph by Anna Strzyżak/ Chancellery of the Sejm
On Tuesday, Polish and Ukrainian abroad ministers met in Warsaw: Radosław Sikorski and Andry Sybiha. 1 subject was the issue of commemoration of victims of genocide in Volyn, which was committed by the Ukrainian Pows dancing Army in 1943–1945. In October Ukrainian Institute of National Memory announcedthat in 2025 he will search the remains of Poles, victims of the Volyn massacre. Now the Ukrainian side's declarations went even further.
"We are determined, in the name of human values and in the Christian spirit, to resolve the issues of the common past," the joint message of ministers says. "Ukraine confirms that there are no obstacles to the conduct of Polish state institutions and private entities in cooperation with the competent Ukrainian institutions of exploration and exhumation work in the territory of Ukraine in accordance with Ukrainian government and declares its readiness to deal positively with the applications in these matters", we read further.
Minister of abroad Affairs of Poland and Ukraine: Radosław Sikorski and Andrij Sybiha. photograph Sebastian Indra/ MFA
The principles under which both the search for victims and the submission and implementation of requests for exhumations in Ukraine are to be carried out are to be worked out by a specially appointed working group, acting under the auspices of the governments of both countries. “Our ministers work on specifics. I hope there will be no more obstacles this time. This is the key to the full reconciliation of our nations, so needed in this dramatic minute of our common history," wrote Prime Minister Donald Tusk on social media.
– We have always made it clear that there will be no accession of Ukraine to the EU if the issue of exhumation, worthy of burial and commemoration of the Volyn genocide is not realised. I believe it will yet happen. Only on the fact are we able to build good neighbourly relations – Deputy Prime Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz commented on social media.
In 1943–1945, nationalists from the Ukrainian Insurgency Army committed genocides in Poles surviving in the areas of Volyn and east Galicia to ethnically cleanse the lands that belonged to Poland before the war and are now in western Ukraine. For political reasons, the full list of victims has never been established. According to estimates of historians, about 100,000 Poles were murdered at the time.
