Ukraine interested in speeding up search efforts in Volyn – Zelenskyy

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that Ukraine is interested in accelerating search efforts in villages where victims of the Volyn tragedy may be buried. [The Volyn (Volhynia) tragedy was a series of events that led to the ethnic cleansing of the Polish and Ukrainian populations in 1943 during World War II. It was part of a long-standing rivalry between Ukrainians and Poles in what is now Ukraine's west. Poland considers the Volyn tragedy a genocide of Poles – ed.]

Source: Zelenskyy's evening address

Quote: "On this day every year, Poland and Ukraine honour the memory of people – civilians who were killed during the Second World War in Volyn. Today, representatives of the Ukrainian state took part in joint prayers with representatives of the Polish state – both here in Ukraine and in Poland.

Ukraine is doing its part to establish the facts honestly regarding those killed in those years: in places where there were villages and where people died, search efforts are being carried out. Ukraine is interested in speeding them up. In two days, exhumation work will begin in the villages of Ostrivky and Volia Ostrovetska. The full truth and Christian commemoration of the victims are what is needed."

Details: Zelenskyy also noted that Ukraine and Poland currently share a common threat, "and it is a deadly threat to our independence, to our states, to every city and every village, and that threat is called Russia."

"While speaking about the past, we must not call into question the future of our peoples – the future of Ukraine, Poland and all of Europe," he stressed.

Background:

• Poland's Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, who attended memorial events in the Ukrainian town of Olyka, spoke about reconciliation and the inadmissibility of a "spiral of hatred".
• Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, in his address marking the National Day of Remembrance of the victims of the Volyn tragedy, stressed the need to preserve solidarity "based on truth, memory and hope", and emphasised that remembrance must not be used as a tool of hatred.
• Ukraine's ambassador to Poland also honoured the victims of the Volyn tragedy at a memorial in Warsaw.
• Oleksandr Alforov, Head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, has emphasised that the search for burial sites of Polish victims of the Volyn tragedy will continue, and he also hopes that the search for Ukrainian dead will begin in two villages in Poland.
• Meanwhile, Polish President Karol Nawrocki called for a legislative ban in Poland on the red-and-black Ukrainian Insurgent Army's flag.