MOSCOW, August 30. /TASS/. Without the exhumation of the victims of the Volhynia massacre and their commemoration Poland will not support Ukraine's accession to the European Union, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defense Wladislaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, currently in the United States on a visit, has said.

"Without the exhumation and commemoration of the Volhynia massacre victims there will be no support from Warsaw for Ukraine's accession to the European Union," the online portal DoRzeczy quotes him as saying.

Kosiniak-Kamysz was commented on Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba’s mention of Operation Vistula - the resettlement of Ukrainians from the south-eastern lands of Poland to the north and west of the country on April 27-28, 1947.

"Such an interpretation of the Volhynia issue (Volhynia Massacre - TASS) is unacceptable," the Polish deputy prime minister pointed out. "It is not a question of history; it is a question of healing the wound that exists today."

At the same time, Kosiniak-Kamysz noted that he was speaking not as a member of his country’s government, but as a politician who heads the Polish Peasant Party. Previously, the politician had repeatedly drawn attention to Kiev's refusal to exhume the bodies of ethnic Poles killed by Ukrainian nationalists during the Volhynia massacre.

Extermination of Volhynia’s Poles by Ukrainian nationalists

In February 1943, Ukrainian nationalists began an operation to exterminate the Polish population of Volhynia. On July 11, 1943, detachments of the OUN-UIA (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists - Ukrainian Insurgent Army, banned in Russia) attacked about 100 Polish villages, killing about 100,000 people, mostly women, children and the elderly. These events are commonly remembered as the Volhynia Massacre. In 2016, the Polish Parliament proclaimed July 11 as the National Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Genocide. As a rule, commemorative events timed for this date are held across the nation: lectures, meetings and exhibitions dedicated to the tragic fate of Poles in Volhynia. On July 14, 2024 in the village of Domostawa, the Subcarpathian Voivodeship in southern Poland, monuments to the victims of the tragedy were erected.

The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, a far-right political organization, operated mainly on the territory of Western Ukraine. In pursuit of its aim of creating an independent Ukraine, the OUN focused on extremist means, including terrorist attacks. During World War II, the OUN, in cooperation with German intelligence agencies, began its struggle against Soviet government. In 1943, it organized the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.