Beneath two now-deserted villages in western Ukraine — the site of World War II-era massacres — archeologists are uncovering the bones at the heart of a dispute that has strained relations between Warsaw and Kyiv for years.Disagreements over what happened and who is responsible for the Volyn massacres have long cast a shadow over ties between the otherwise now close neighbors.Between 1943 and 1945, about 70,000 to 100,000 civilians were killed by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) in territory occupied by Nazi Germany, according to Polish estimates of the toll.
Archeologists work with human remains at the exhumation site of the World War II Volyn massacre near the destroyed village of Ostrivky, Ukraine, on Tuesday.
Warsaw calls it a “genocide” against the Polish minority, while Ukraine hails the UPA as freedom fighters, sees the events as a wartime “tragedy” and says that Ukrainians were killed in retaliation.Amid sunflower fields and forests, joint Polish-Ukrainian teams of archeologists have been carefully excavating the remains of victims.
“We want to restore their first and last names ... to fulfill the duty that rests on us as heirs of those who were murdered here,” Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) deputy president Karol Polejowski said.The remains of more than 50 people have been recovered in a series of exhumations in the area, but they have yet to be identified. A handmade wooden cross, planted near the graves, is one of the few signs that the villages ever existed. Political leaders in both countries believe the exhumations could be a first step in repairing relations, which have been strained this year by a row triggered when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy named a military unit after the UPA.In a white tent about 10km from the Polish border, experts meticulously lay out the skeletons of recovered victims, measuring bones and carefully trying to match broken skull fragments.A small number of other artifacts — rosaries, religious medallions and shoes — have also been unearthed under the field of yellow-and-black sunflowers, one of the national symbols of Ukraine.“The remains were arranged in a highly disordered manner. Most of the bodies had been brought to the burial pit and simply dumped into it,” Ukrainian Memorial and Search Center anthropologist Olga Mineiko said.Polejowski said the victims were likely “driven to the field of death barefoot and without personal belongings.”The genetic material is collected, with the IPN appealing to Poles who believe they might have lost relatives in the massacre to provide their own to help find matches. Forensic specialists and anthropologists would also examine the bones to determine the approximate age, sex and cause of death of each of them.It is believed that between 30 to 40 percent of the 50 remains discovered so far were children, Polejowski said.The massacres have been a recurring point of contention between Warsaw and Kyiv.The UPA was a paramilitary organization tied to the Ukrainian independence movement that fought the Soviet Union’s Red Army.However, it collaborated with the Nazis when they first invaded the Soviet Union, clashed with the Polish resistance, and killed Poles, Jews and other civilians.Since Russia invaded in 2022, the UPA has been honored in Ukraine as a force that fought for independence from Moscow under the Soviet Union.Kyiv insisted Zelenskiy’s choice of name for the military unit was not directed against Warsaw, but Polish President Karol Nawrocki withdrew Poland’s highest national honor from him in response.In Poland, the issue has become even more politicized as nationalist parties seek to embolden their base ahead of parliamentary elections next year — part of a broader campaign to whip up anti-Ukrainian sentiment.Poland is home to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees — with a backlash against their presence having surged during a divisive presidential election campaign last year, won by the right-wing Nawrocki.The country is still the main hub for military and humanitarian aid deliveries to Ukraine, and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s pro-European government has repeatedly called for a de-escalation.Warsaw has welcomed efforts by Zelenskiy to cool the tension, including the promise of opening of classified intelligence documents.As Tusk and Zelenskiy try to bury the hatchet, in the Ukrainian fields near the Polish border, plans are underway for a proper farewell to those uncovered.“We want them to be buried here, where they lived, where each of them had their dreams and plans, and wanted their life to unfold,” Polejowski said. “In this soil they should rest.”
