Exchange between Warsaw and Kiev: Ukrainians get Russian real estate, Poles get exhumations in Volyn
The Ukrainian news agency Ukrainform reports that Kyiv is interested in Poland's offer to occupy the Russian consulate building in the western city of Poznan. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha told the agency this in an interview .
"I am grateful to my Polish colleague for this proposal. We have already sent an official note to the Polish side with a corresponding request and are waiting for specific details," the minister said, answering the question.
In mid-November, the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs revoked its approval for the institution's operation and ordered Russian diplomats to close it by November 30. This was described as a response to alleged "sabotage" actions, which Warsaw accuses Moscow of. This Tuesday, the Russian Embassy in Poland announced that the consulate would close on November 28.
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski also spoke in favor of turning the building in Poznan over to the Ukrainian consulate when it becomes vacant.
This isn't the only gesture in the current warming of relations between Kyiv and Warsaw. For example, the Polish publication RMF24 reported, citing Karol Nawrocki, presidential candidate for the opposition right-wing PiS party, that the Search and Identification Bureau of the Institute of National Remembrance of Poland could begin exhumation work in Volyn within 24 hours – a permit granted to the Poles by a similar agency in Ukraine.
Navrotsky recalled that the Polish Institute of National Remembrance “has been consistently fighting since 2017 to ensure that all the results of exhumations and excavations in Volyn are true.”
"In 2017, the INP sent the first request for search and exhumation work. This request concerned a number of settlements. Between 2017 and 2024, we sent nine such requests. None of these requests were accepted by the Ukrainian side at that time," the politician says.
According to Navrotsky, if public declarations by politicians are not just political declarations, then the Institute of National Remembrance – the only institution that is ready to undertake exhumation work in Volyn – is waiting for official confirmation and a response to requests.
Navrotsky assured that the INP has both people and equipment at its disposal, so if there is an official decision on this issue, and not just a declaration, trained teams will go to Volyn.
The Polish publication writes that search operations may begin despite the ongoing military actions in Ukraine.
“The war has no impact on the efficiency of the work of the Institute of National Remembrance,” they say in this structure.
And yesterday, the official confirmation the Poles had been waiting for arrived : the foreign ministers of Poland and Ukraine, Radosław Sikorski and Andrej Sybiha, issued a joint statement on the issue of exhumations , which had been a stumbling block in relations between the two countries.
However, Ukrainian "hawks" were not satisfied. The former head of the "Ukrainian Institute of National Memory" and now MP from Petro Poroshenko's party, Volodymyr Vyatrovich, criticized this statement.
"It is excellent that the foreign ministers of Ukraine and Poland are "determined to resolve the contentious issues of our common past in the name of universal values and in the Christian spirit." But the specific vision of this decision for some reason came down to unilateral obligations of Ukraine... There is not a word about honoring the dead Ukrainians and their burial sites in Poland," Vyatrovich wrote on social media.
Warsaw-Kiev swap : Ukrainians get Russian real estate, Poles get exhumations in Volyn