According to journalists, the meeting of the heads of state lasted much longer than the schedule suggested and concerned security, economic cooperation and historical issues. It was during this conversation that Navrotsky handed over the publication to Zelensky.
The two-volume book was published in 2023, when Nawrocki headed the Institute of National Memory of Poland.
Polish historians claim that the publication contains eyewitness accounts of the Volyn tragedy and documented facts.
The Institute of National Remembrance called the gift a “symbolic gesture” that should emphasize the importance of the exhumations of the victims of the Volyn tragedy for Poland and help strengthen Polish-Ukrainian partnership relations.
Context
The Volyn tragedy (in Polish historiography – the Volyn massacre) is a series of mutual ethnic cleansings that were carried out in Volyn during the Second World War by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army on the one hand, the Home Army and other Polish formations on the other. The exact number of casualties on both sides is unknown. It is believed that 25–100 thousand Poles and from several thousand to 24 thousand Ukrainians became victims of the purges.
The Sejm of Poland recognized the Volyn tragedy as genocide, and also established July 11 as the National Day of Remembrance for the victims of the genocide committed by Ukrainian nationalists against citizens of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine called this decision an incorrect assessment of the tragic events.
After the start of the full-scale invasion of the aggressor country Russia, Zelensky and Andrzej Duda, formerly the president of Poland, stated that a new stage had begun in the history of relations between the countries and “historical issues seem minor.” But after this, representatives of the Polish authorities made anti-Ukrainian statements.
