Exhumations are currently under way in the former Volhynian villages of Wola Ostrowiecka and Ostrówki, where the remains of 53 people have been recovered so far, according to a ministry statement issued last week. The work, expected to finish by Aug. 7, follows earlier searches at the same sites in 1992, 2011 and 2015 that recovered and reburied 674 sets of remains.
Poland's Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) is now seeking Ukrainian approval to bring artifacts recovered alongside the remains back to Poland for return to victims' families or museums, the ministry said, adding that it and the IPN were urging relatives of former residents of the two villages to submit DNA samples to help identify victims.
Wednesday's meeting, chaired by Paweł Kowal, head of Poland's Council for Cooperation with Ukraine, and Ukrainian Deputy Culture Minister Ivan Verbytskyi, also covered sites already worked on this year - Uhly, Huta Pieniacka and Puźniki - along with pending Polish applications for Uhly, Wiśniowiec, Hucisko and Miedziaki.
Verbytskyi wrote on Facebook that Kyiv had issued all permits agreed at the group's previous session, held in Warsaw on Dec. 16, 2025, and that "both sides underscored the successful completion of work at the agreed locations in Ukrainian territory".
"The Polish side also submitted a list of further sites in Ukraine where additional work is planned. Applications for these locations have already been filed or will be filed soon", he added.
Further searches are planned at Puźniki, in the present-day Ternopil region, around late August or early September, backed by Polish culture ministry funding and carried out with Poland's Freedom and Democracy Foundation, Pomeranian Medical University and the archaeological firm “Wołyń Antiquities”.
Digs there last spring uncovered at least 42 sets of remains, reburied on Sept. 6; a follow-up search in June failed to locate a second suspected mass grave, and another phase of work is tentatively set for Aug. 17.
The IPN also intends to begin exhuming the graves of Polish soldiers killed defending Lviv in September 1939, buried at the city's Holosko Velyke cemetery, in late August. Several other applications remain under Ukrainian government review.
Search and exhumation work had been frozen for years under a ban imposed by Ukraine's national remembrance institute in 2017, after a monument to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) was dismantled in southeastern Poland. The moratorium was lifted in late November 2024, and a bilateral working group was set up the same month to clear a backlog of outstanding applications.
The renewed searches concern what is known in Poland as the Volhynia massacre - the killing of Polish civilians by OUN and UPA nationalist forces during and after the German occupation, which peaked on July 11, 1943, when UPA units struck roughly 150 Volhynian towns and villages in a single day. Polish historians estimate about 100,000 Poles, mostly women, children and the elderly, were killed.
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Source: PAP