Ukraine and Poland exchange lists of sites to search for remains of victims of historical conflicts - Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications

12 January, 11:10
Ukraine and world
Ukraine and Poland exchange lists of sites to search for remains of victims of historical conflicts - Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications - фото 1
Kyiv and Warsaw have exchanged lists of places to search for the remains of victims of mutual historical conflicts.

According to Ukrinform, Andrii Najos, Deputy Minister of Culture and Strategic Communications of Ukraine, who heads the working group on historical issues on the Ukrainian side, stated this in a commentary to PAP.

“We have made a very important first step: we have exchanged requests from the Polish side to carry out work on the territory of Ukraine, while the Polish side has received requests from us to carry out our work in Poland. Now we are analyzing these requests and collecting documents to make positive decisions and publicly comment on the results of said work with the consent of both parties,” Najos said.

Another Ukrainian official informed the Polish agency that Ukraine had given its consent to search for the remains of victims in the place where Polish graves were discovered in 2023. The agency notes that this is likely to be the site the then-Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki visited in 2023, namely the former village of Puzhnyky in the Ternopil region, where Ukrainian and Polish experts discovered mass graves of Polish victims from 1945.

According to the agency's source, exhumation permits on the territory of Ukraine will be issued separately for each burial site after reviewing all the necessary documents.

On Saturday, during a press conference in Strone Śląskie in the south of Poland, Polish Minister of Culture Hanna Wróblewska said that the Ukrainian-Polish working group is continuing to work on search and exhumation work. According to her, given the importance of the topic, the results of its work will be first revealed to interested individuals and organizations that are part of this process and later to the public. She expressed her gratitude to the Minister of Culture of Ukraine, Mykola Tochytskyi, for the first consent issued for the exhumation of Polish victims of the Volyn tragedy.