As noted in the article, researchers from the Freedom and Democracy Foundation, scientists from the Pomeranian Medical University and representatives of the Institute for National Memory with several tons of equipment work from the Polish side.
At the site of the mass grave – among the forest – they equipped the medical base and began work, note that the area is protected by the police.
According to estimates, in 1945, about 80 people died in pools.
Matsya Vrubel from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage before the start of the exhumation said that Poland was seeking to identify all bodies and worthy to bury them.
Context
Volyn tragedy (in Polish historiography – Volyn massacre) – a number of mutual ethnic purges, which during the Second World War on Volyn were conducted by the Ukrainian rebel army on the one hand, the Kraiov army and other Polish formations on the other. The exact number of victims on both sides is unknown. It is believed that 25-100 thousand Poles and from several thousand to 24 thousand Ukrainians became victims of purges.
The interpretation of these events is one of the most difficult issues in the relations of Ukraine and Poland. In 2016, the Seim of Poland recognized the Volyn tragedy with genocide. In response, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a statement in which she called the decision of the Polish Sejm an incorrect assessment of tragic events.
In 2017, Ukraine, in response to the destruction and damage of Ukrainian monuments on the territory of Poland, introduced a moratorium on the exhumation of the Poles burials in Ukrainian territory. All these years, this issue has been raised between countries. Poland stated that she would discuss issues of the exhumation of the Poles in the framework of negotiations on the entry of Ukraine to the EU. In Warsaw, it was noted that if this part of the question “is not closed”, then Ukraine will not approach the entry into the European Union.
In October 2024, the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory reported that in 2025 in the Rivne region they could be carried out to search And Exhumations of the Poles, who became victims of the Volyn tragedy, although it was noted that many of the statements “unprofessional” in Poland on this subject on this subject.
On November 25 of the same year, the foreign ministers of Poland and Ukraine Radoslav Sikorsky and Andrei Sibiga accepted a joint statement on the creation of the Ukrainian-Polish working group, which will deal with the issue of exhumation of the victims of the Volyn tragedy.
On February 9, 2025, the Ambassador of Ukraine to Warsaw Vasily Bodnar confirmed in an interview with TVN 24 that the exhumation of the victims of the Volyn tragedy will begin in the spring in the Ternopil region.
