Polish presidential candidate and director of the Institute of National Remembrance, Karol Nawrocki, expressed doubts about Ukraine allowing the exhumation of the remains of the victims of the Volhynian massacre.
Earlier, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced that Ukraine had taken the first step toward allowing such exhumations. However, Nawrocki stated on the RMF FM radio that he did not yet see grounds for optimism. According to Nawrocki, he will believe in progress only when exhumations actually begin.
The turning point will not be a statement, but concrete actions. We are talking about the fate of 1,500 settlements that disappeared from the map and 120,000 victims, he added.
In 2017, Ukraine imposed a moratorium on search and exhumation work in response to the demolition of a UPA monument in the Polish town of Hruszowice. The head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, Anton Drobovych, stated in 2023 that exhumation would be possible only after the restoration of this monument. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed readiness to facilitate the unblocking of permits for search operations.
