Polish-Ukrainian search operations have resumed in Puzhnyky, Ternopil region. Last time, 42 victims of 1945 were found there

A new stage of Polish-Ukrainian search work has begun in the former village of Puzhnyky (now the village of Sadove, Chortkiv district, Ternopil region). Researchers will search for the remains of the village residents who died in February 1945. The work will last from June 22 to 28.

This was reported by the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance.

Work in Puzhnyky began in 2023. The former village became the first place where search efforts for Polish victims killed in 1943-1945 by UPA fighters began after the moratorium was lifted. The moratorium was introduced in 2017 in response to the mass destruction of Ukrainian monuments in Poland and the inadequate investigation of these crimes in Poland.

In September 2025, the bodies of at least 42 Polish victims were reburied in Puzhnyky, the first such Polish-Ukrainian ceremony in 10 years. The reburial was called a breakthrough in relations between the countries.

In a statement about the start of a new phase of work, the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance writes that in February 1945, Puzhnyky, where ethnic Poles lived compactly, was subjected to an armed attack.

According to archival sources, some of the villageʼs residents died tragically, and the village itself was burned. The UINP does not specify who committed the attack.

Relations between Poland and Ukraine in the context of exhumations

In December 2020, the heads of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance and the Institute of National Remembrance of the Republic of Poland agreed to hold consultations on resolving problematic issues related to the Volyn tragedy and other mass killings between Ukrainians and Poles during World War II. Thus, they developed a draft regulation of the group to resolve them, but Poland has not yet approved it.

In June 2022, the Ministries of Culture of Ukraine and Poland signed a Memorandum of Cooperation in the Field of National Remembrance. It provided for the search, exhumation, and burial of victims. The Memorandum was to come into force after the end of martial law in Ukraine.

However, Poland, during the full-scale Russian invasion, constantly raises the issue of searching for and exhuming the graves of Poles in Ukraine.

In 2023, Ukraine went to Poland — joint research was conducted with the Poles in the former village of Puzhnyky. At the same time, Poland did not fulfill Ukraineʼs request to restore the memorial plaque at the burial place of the UPA soldiers on Monastyr Mountain.

The issue of its restoration in its original form, with the names of those buried in this mass grave, was raised at the highest level — the presidents of Ukraine and Poland.

In January 2025, Ukraine allowed the exhumation of the bodies of Polish victims of the Volyn tragedy for the first time. At the end of 2025, a joint working group agreed on a list of sites for excavations for this year. In Ukraine, these are Puzhnyky, Huta Pieniacka, Holosko, Ostrivky and Ugli, and in Poland — Jureckova, Laskiv and Sagryn.

For more news and in-depth stories from Ukraine, please follow us on X.