During search operations in the former village of Puzhnyky in the Ternopil region, experts did not discover any new mass graves

During the search operations that lasted from November 4 to 7 in the former village of Puzhnyky in the Ternopil region, Ukrainian and Polish experts did not discover any new mass graves.

The Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance writes about this.

Experts dug about 40 search trenches, but they did not find any human remains. At the same time, experts discovered the remains of an old road, the foundations of a cemetery chapel, part of the burials of the old cemetery, and the remains of an outbuilding.

Puzhnyky is a former village in the Ternopil region, where Poles lived compactly before World War II. In February 1945, the settlement was subjected to an armed attack, during which some of the inhabitants died, and the village was burned.

In June of the same year, the villagers were resettled to Poland, and in 1949, the Soviet authorities officially liquidated the village. Since then, its territory has remained uninhabited and gradually overgrown with forest.

Volyn tragedy

In 1943-1944, mass murders of Poles took place in Volhynia. The Polish Institute of National Remembrance cites official data of 120 000 Poles killed in Volyn and the southeastern provinces of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and also mentions 5 000 Ukrainians killed. Ukrainian historians cite other figures: up to 20 000 Ukrainians killed and 35-40 000 Poles killed.

Discussions are also ongoing regarding the perpetrators and organizers of the crime. In Poland, the Volyn tragedy is called a "massacre", officially recognized as "genocide", and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army is blamed, but this interpretation is not shared in Ukraine.

Relations between Poland and Ukraine in the context of exhumations

After Ukraine gained independence, the issue of the Volyn tragedy was repeatedly raised by politicians in both countries. Ukraine and Poland held joint events to honor the victims and tried to find points of understanding. However, after Poland recognized the Volyn tragedy as genocide in 2016, discussions intensified.

In response to the destruction of Ukrainian monuments in Poland, Ukraine imposed a moratorium on the exhumation of Polish graves. Despite agreements in 2020 and 2022 on cooperation in the field of historical memory, the issue remained unresolved.

In 2023, Ukraine allowed joint research of the burials in Puzhnyky, but Poland has still not fulfilled Kyivʼs request to restore the memorial plaque on the grave of UPA soldiers on Monastyr Mountain.

In January 2025, Ukraine allowed the exhumation of the bodies of Polish victims of the Volyn tragedy for the first time. And in May, the exhumation of the victims of 1945 was completed in the Ternopil region — in Poland it was called a breakthrough.

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