A reburial ceremony for the remains found during the search was held on September 6 at the site of the former village of Puzhnyky in the Ternopil region. Representatives of the Ukrainian and Polish authorities and about 40 descendants of the village residents participated in the event.
This is reported by the Polish Press Agency and Ukrinform.
The discovered remains were reburied in the same place where the exhumation work was carried out — in the old Puzhnyky cemetery.
Ukraine was represented by the acting Minister of Culture and Strategic Communications Tetyana Berezhna, the Deputy Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Olena Kondratyuk, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Oleksandr Mishchenko, and the head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance Oleksandr Alferov.
The Polish delegation was headed by the Marshal of the Polish Senate Małgorzata Kidawa-Błonska. It also included the Minister of Culture and National Heritage Marta Cienkowski, the Chargé dʼAffaires ad interim in Ukraine Piotr Lukasiewicz, and the Consul General in Lutsk Anna Nowakowska.
"In three years, we will celebrate the 370th anniversary of one of the most important events in the history of Polish-Ukrainian relations — the Union of Hadyak. The Union that hundreds of years ago ensured Ukraineʼs permanent membership in European civilization," Polish President Karol Nawrocki wrote in a letter.
He emphasized that he hopes "that by then the process of genuine Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation will begin forever, and the still bleeding wound of the genocide committed in Volhynia, Podolia, and Galicia will begin to heal".
A Roman Catholic mass was held during the ceremony. The memorials will remain nameless for now, as DNA testing of the remains is still ongoing. Initial identification results are expected later this year.
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 honour 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 mass destruction of Ukrainian monuments in Poland in 2015-2017 and due to the inadequate investigation of these crimes, Ukraine imposed so-called moratoriums on the search and exhumation of the remains of Poles who were killed in 1943-1945 by the UPA fighters.
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 to resolve the problematic issues. 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 and conducted joint research with the Poles on the territory of the former village cemetery of the village of Sadove, Chortkiv district, Ternopil region (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. And in May, the exhumation of the victims of 1945 was completed in the Ternopil region — in Poland it was called a breakthrough.
- Polish President Karol Nawrocki is looking forward to the continuation of the partnership between Kyiv and Warsaw. However, for this, he said, some historical issues need to be resolved — most likely, he was referring to the Volyn tragedy.
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