Volhynia exhumations dispute. IPN responds to Ukrainian counterpart chief's comments

The head of Ukraine's Institute of National Memory (UINM), Anton Drobovych, told the Interfax-Ukraine agency that on Thursday morning that since September, the Polish IPN had not responded to his request to provide a list of locations where the remains of victims, including those of the Volhynia massacre, are to be searched.

The agency also reported that the UINM chief had "complained that it will now be difficult to distinguish statements by the IPN official from those of a presidential candidate," noting that Law and Justice (PiS) had endorsed IPN head Karol Nawrocki's candidacy for the presidency.

In response to Drobovych's remarks, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance issued a statement on Thursday, saying that his "words are manipulative and mislead public opinion" and that "they harm Polish-Ukrainian cooperation in commemorating the victims of the Volhynia massacre."

The IPN emphasized that as part of its correspondence with the Ukrainian side, including the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture, nine main applications and dozens of detailed ones have been submitted to request permission to conduct search and exhumation work for, among others, the victims of the Volhynia massacre. Each application identified precise locations selected by the IPN specialists for the intended work.

"During yesterday's (Wednesday’s - PAP) press conference at the Institute's headquarters, Dr. Karol Nawrocki confirmed that IPN specialists are ready to travel to Ukraine within 24 hours to carry out search and exhumation work," the IPN wrote. The Institute stressed that it perceives Anton Drobovych's words as an attempt to block the search process for the victims of the Volhynia massacre, which has been agreed upon by the authorities of Poland and Ukraine. "The Polish side operates in accordance with applicable Ukrainian law, always meeting all formal requirements, as clearly emphasized yesterday by IPN President Dr. Karol Nawrocki," the statement reads.

"Given the importance of the matter and our determination to give the Poles murdered by Ukrainian nationalists a dignified burial, the Institute of National Remembrance is preparing a response, which will soon be sent to the Ukrainian Institute. This does not change the fact that we consider the applications already submitted as valid and binding for the Ukrainian side," the IPN reported. It added that "in the mass graves of UPA death pits, the remains of approximately 120,000 murdered Poles await exhumation."

The IPN also pointed out that its Ukrainian counterpart is not a party to the proceedings for granting permission to conduct search and exhumation work.

On Tuesday, Ukraine confirmed that there were no obstacles to carrying out search and exhumation work on its territory. The decision to lift the moratorium in place since 2017 on searches and exhumations of Polish victims of the Volhynia massacre was announced during a joint press conference by the foreign ministers of Poland and Ukraine, Radosław Sikorski and Andriy Sybiha.

Since the spring of 2017, a dispute has persisted between Warsaw and Kyiv regarding the ban on searches and exhumations of Polish war and conflict victims on Ukrainian territory, introduced by the UINM. The ban was issued following the dismantling of a UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) monument in Hruszowice in April 2017.

Poland and Ukraine have long differed in their historical memory regarding the role of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which between 1943 and 1945 carried out a genocidal ethnic cleansing of nearly 100,000 Polish men, women, and children.

While the Polish side views this as a reprehensible crime of genocide (massive and organized), Ukrainians see it as the result of a symmetrical armed conflict, for which both sides were equally responsible. Furthermore, Ukrainians prefer to view the OUN and UPA solely as anti-Soviet organizations (due to their post-war resistance movement against the USSR), rather than anti-Polish ones.

Between 2017 and 2024, the IPN submitted nine official general applications to Ukrainian administrative bodies, covering agreements to conduct search and exhumation work in 65 locations (some locations were repeated due to the necessity of resubmitting applications). Some of these were approved, and the work was carried out. In other locations, permission was denied, and some applications remained unanswered.