Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is visiting Poland after the two countries reached an agreement on a longstanding source of tensions between them: the exhumation of Polish victims of World War II-era massacres by Ukrainian nationalists, APA reports citing The Times of Israel.
The office of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk says that he would welcome Zelenskyy in the late morning, and that the two would hold a joint news conference.
The visit comes just days after Tusk announced progress on starting exhumations, an issue that has strained relations for years. Poland now holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, a 27-member bloc that Ukraine aspires to join.
“Finally a breakthrough. There is a decision on the first exhumations of Polish victims of the UPA,” Tusk posted on X on Friday, referring to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. “I thank the ministers of culture of Poland and Ukraine for their good cooperation. We are waiting for further decisions.”
A nongovernmental organization, the Freedom and Democracy Foundation, said Monday that it would begin exhumation work on victims in Ukraine in April.
Although Poland has been one of Ukraine’s most stalwart supporters since Russia’s full-scale invasion nearly three years ago, the issue of the Polish victims lying in mass graves in Ukrainian soil eight decades after they were killed has left a festering bitterness among many Poles.
The issue dates back to 1943-44, when Europe was at war. Ukrainian nationalists massacred about 100,000 Poles in Volhynia and other regions that were then in eastern Poland, under Nazi German occupation, and which are now part of Ukraine.
Entire villages were burned down and their inhabitants killed by the nationalists and their helpers who were seeking to establish an independent Ukraine state. Poland considers the events a genocide and has been asking Ukraine to let it exhume the victims to give them proper burials.
An estimated 15,000 Ukrainians were killed in retaliation.
The issue is sensitive for Ukraine because some of the World War II-era Ukrainian nationalists are regarded as national heroes because of their struggle for Ukraine’s statehood.
