Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha told a round-table of historians that Warsaw’s broad support since Moscow’s 2022 invasion remains “proof of genuine solidarity”, yet recent “one-sided interpretations” of World War II–era events risk eroding that unity.
In a statement after the meeting, the ministry said politicizing historical disputes “serves the interests of the Russian aggressor” and urged both countries to handle sensitive issues through professional dialogue based on facts, mutual respect and joint exhumation work already under way.
Kyiv proposed reviving a dormant Polish-Ukrainian historians’ forum and a broader Partnership Forum to counter disinformation, head off provocations and “prevent incitement of hostility between our nations”.
Earlier this month, Poland received permission from Ukrainian authorities to carry out exhumation work in the former village of Zboiska, now a district of Lviv, where around 300 Polish soldiers were killed or wounded in intense fighting against Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht troops in September 1939.
This marks the second such project greenlighted by Ukrainian authorities in recent months, after a site in the former village of Puźniki, where between 50 and 120 ethnic Poles were killed by Ukrainian nationalists in February 1945.
The exhumation in Puźniki, now Puzhnyky in Ukraine's western Ternopil region, marked the first such operation since Ukraine lifted its 2017 ban on Polish-led searches and exhumations of wartime burial sites in the country.
The ban was officially lifted in November last year, following prolonged negotiations between Warsaw and Kyiv.
Poland has been one of Ukraine’s staunchest military and humanitarian backers, but rows over interpretations of the 1943–44 Volhynia massacres and other traumatic episodes periodically flare up, complicating the strategic alliance.
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Source: PAP, Polskie Radio 24