PUZHNYKY, Ukraine: Remains of Poles killed by Ukrainian nationalist insurgents during World War Two were buried in western Ukraine on Saturday as officials from both countries looked on, a move to ease a rare strain in relations between the two close allies.
Poland was allowed to exhume the remains in the former Polish village of Puzniki, in present-day Ukraine, earlier this year after longstanding demands from Warsaw over the issue, which has caused friction between the neighboring countries.
With Polish Catholic priests officiating, the simple wooden coffins of 42 Poles, each marked with a cross and flanked by wooden cross, were placed in a long, narrow grave in a wooded, abandoned cemetery.
Lanterns and wreaths draped in Polish red and white and Ukrainian yellow and blue colors were laid alongside.
“The victims of the Puzniki massacre rested in an unmarked grave for decades, but their memory endures for their loved ones and those who fought for this remembrance, truth, and act of elementary justice,” Polish Culture Minister Marta Cienkowska was quoted as saying by state news agency PAP.
“Today’s burial is a restoration of dignity to those who had it stripped from them in the most inhumane way.”
Cienkowska expressed confidence that it would be possible to locate and identify remaining victims, according to PAP.
Survivor Maria Jarzycka-Wroblewska, 90, said groups of men had assured residents they would be safe and then the killings occurred overnight.
“No one in my immediate family was murdered here, but neighbors, friends and even a distant cousin were,” she said.
“Thank God that the Ukrainian authorities and the Poles came to an agreement and this is finally done...You cannot put all Ukrainians in the same basket.”
The abandoned village is among sites where Polish officials say more than 100,000 people were killed by insurgents between 1943 and 1945.
Large swathes of modern-day western Ukraine were under Polish control at the time. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which fought against both Nazi German forces and the Soviet Red Army, is widely held responsible for the killings as part of efforts to limit Polish influence over the area.
The so-called Volhynia massacres have complicated relations even as Poland has backed Ukraine against Russia’s 2022 invasion by supplying weapons and taking in almost a million refugees.
Ukraine has rejected Poland’s description of the killings as “genocide,” saying thousands of Ukrainians were also killed in events that were part of a wider conflict between the neighbors.
The exhumations involving around 20 specialists had been aimed at identifying victims and burying them. Polish officials have called on Ukraine to allow more operations to take place.
Poland buries wartime remains in western Ukraine as part of reconciliation
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Poland buries wartime remains in western Ukraine as part of reconciliation
- Poland was allowed to exhume the remains in the former Polish village of Puzniki
- Lanterns and wreaths draped in Polish red and white and Ukrainian yellow and blue colors were laid alongside
Russia sentences Briton who fought for Ukraine to 13 years in prison camp
- The jailed Briton was named as 30-year-old Hayden Davies by Russia’s Prosecutor General
- State prosecutors released a video of Davies being questioned as he stood behind bars
MOSCOW: A British man who fought for Ukraine against the Russian army has been sentenced to 13 years in a maximum security prison camp after being convicted of being a paid mercenary, Russian prosecutors said on Thursday.
The jailed Briton was named as 30-year-old Hayden Davies by Russia’s Prosecutor General which said he had been tried by a court in a part of Russian-controlled Donetsk, one of four Ukrainian regions which Moscow claimed as its own in 2022 in a move Kyiv and the West rejected an illegal land grab.
State prosecutors released a video of Davies being questioned as he stood behind bars, dressed in a black coat and with a shaven head. He says in the video that he had traveled to Ukraine to join the International Legion which paid him $400-500 per month.
The International Legion for the Defense of Ukraine is a unit of the Ukrainian military made up of foreign volunteers.
Asked if he pleaded guilty to the charge against him, Davies says “yeah” and nods his head.
It was not clear whether Davies was speaking under duress and there was no immediate comment from the British Foreign Office.
London in February said Davies was not a mercenary but a Prisoner of War entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions. It also condemned what it called Moscow’s exploitation of prisoners of war “for political and propaganda purposes.”
Russian prosecutors said on Thursday that Davies had arrived in western Ukraine in August 2024, signed a contract to fight for the International Legion, undergone military training, and then fought against the Russian army in Donetsk.
Davies had been captured by Russia in winter 2024 carrying a US-made assault rifle and ammunition, they said.
British media have reported that Davies once served in the British army and is married and originally from Southampton.
A Russian court jailed another British man, James Scott Rhys Anderson, for 19 years in March after finding him guilty of fighting for Ukraine in the Kursk region of western Russia.
