An official ceremony commemorating those who died in the Volyn Massacre was held on Monday, with Polish President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki participating in the event. They were joined by members of the cabinet, lawmakers, top clerics, officers, and relatives of the victims.
President Duda stressed that the genocide was a historic fact, noting that Kiev should acknowledge what happened 79 years ago.
"What do we want? We want the truth, we want graves. We want to pray on the graves of our loved ones", he said.
Warsaw believes that the Ukrainian Insurgent Army* (UPA) nationalists, who collaborated with Nazi Germany, committed genocide against Polish citizens of the Second Republic of Poland in 1939-1945. The bloodshed culminated on July 11, 1943, during the Volyn Massacre, in which around 150 Polish settlements were attacked by the Ukrainians. According to Poland, over 100,000 people were killed by the radicals.
*The Ukrainian Insurgent Army is an extremist group banned in Russia.