During his visit to Kyiv, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski called on Ukraine to lift the moratorium on search and exhumation work in Volyn.
He stated this during a joint press conference with his Ukrainian counterpart Andriy Sybiha.
Volyn tragedy — Poland's position
— We appeal to you and ask you not to create politics against this background and to allow the victims of crimes to receive a Christian burial, — Sikorski said, addressing the Ukrainian side.
According to the head of the Polish Foreign Ministry, there is no need to bargain on this issue, and Polish society is waiting for this problem to be resolved.
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Volyn tragedy — Ukraine's response
In response to Sikorsky's call, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said that Ukrainians share the approach to the need to depoliticize complex issues of our common historical past.
— I believe that we have enough political will and diplomatic capacity to resolve any complex and very complex issues in our relations in the spirit of strategic partnership, in the spirit of the very high level of interaction that we have found today, in the spirit of fraternal relations, — he added.
Volyn tragedy: historical problem of Ukraine and Poland
Recall that the disputes between Kyiv and Warsaw regarding the Volyn tragedy have been going on for years.
Recently, the rhetoric has changed, and representatives of the Polish government have begun to put forward a solution to the Volyn tragedy as a condition for Ukraine's entry into the EU. For example, the head of the Polish Ministry of Defense, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, said that Ukraine would not join the EU without resolving the Volyn issue.
However, the head of the Polish Sejm, Szymon Gołownia, claimed that Ukraine should join the European Union regardless of this historical issue.
We are talking about the events in Volyn in 1943, which in Ukraine are called the Volyn tragedy, while in Poland the Volyn massacre. We are talking about the mutual ethnic cleansing of the Polish and Ukrainian populations, which were carried out by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army on one side, and on the other, by the Home Army, with the participation of Schutzmannschaft battalions and Soviet partisans.
