Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was visiting Warsaw on Wednesday, following what Poland has called a breakthrough in a historical dispute about wartime exhumations that has stood between the allies.
The issue of securing the exhumation and proper burial of victims looks set to be important in a May presidential election in which a conservative historian who heads the National Remembrance Institute (IPN) is running as the main nationalist opposition candidate.
Although Poland has been one of Ukraine’s staunchest backers since Russia invaded in 2022, ties between the neighbours have been strained for generations by the Volhynia killings that took place from 1943 to 1945.
The issue has become even more heated in recent years, and Polish Deputy Prime Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said in October that Ukraine would have to resolve it in order to join the European Union.
Ukraine, which faces a new Russian push along front lines, also plans to discuss its requests for more weaponry.
Poland says more than 100,000 Poles were killed in the massacres by Ukrainian nationalists. Thousands of Ukrainians also died in reprisal killings.
Warsaw has long demanded free access for its specialists to sites where the remains of those killed are believed to have been buried, so that they can be exhumed for proper funerals.
On Friday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk hailed a “breakthrough” in ties, saying that Ukraine had made a decision to allow the first exhumations of victims to take place.
Polish daily Rzeczpospolita reported that work on exhumations was scheduled to begin in April.
DIALOGUE
Zelenskiy will hold talks with Tusk and the two leaders will hold a joint press conference at 1140 GMT. He will then meet President Andrzej Duda.
Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelenskiy’s office, said on the Telegram messaging app that the leaders would discuss “War, weapons, sanctions, history, weakening of Russian energy as a tool for financing the war”.
“There are a lot of topics (to discuss), including of course exhumations,” a Polish government official told Reuters. “What interests us is the way these decisions (about exhumations) are carried out.”
Poland took up the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union this month, with bolstering the bloc’s security and commitment to Ukraine high on the agenda as leaders look ahead to Donald Trump’s inauguration as U.S. president.
MASSACRES
The area where the massacres took place, which was inhabited by both Poles and Ukrainians, was part of Poland before World War Two before being occupied by the Soviet Union.
In 2013, the Polish parliament recognised the massacre by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) during World War Two as “ethnic cleansing bearing the hallmarks of genocide”.
Ukraine has not accepted that assertion and often refers to the Volhynia events as part of a conflict between Poland and Ukraine that affected both nations.
Kyiv has said that Poland mistreated Ukrainians on its territory after the war by forcibly relocating them to other parts of the country. It also complained about the vandalism in 2015 of a monument to Ukrainian nationalist soldiers in Poland.
