Polish investigators begin new search for World War II mass graves in western Ukraine

Polish investigators and archaeologists on Tuesday began a new round of excavation in western Ukraine aimed at locating and identifying the mass graves of Polish civilians killed during World War II.

The work, coordinated by Poland's Institute of National Remembrance and Ukrainian partners, began this week at Huta Pieniacka, a former Polish village in what is now Ukraine's Lviv region, where hundreds of Poles were killed in February 1944.

Polish officials say the search forms part of a broader effort to locate victims of wartime massacres carried out by Ukrainian nationalist formations, including the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), during the 1943-45 period.

The UPA made headlines last month after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued a decree giving an army special forces unit the honorary name "Heroes of the UPA," triggering outrage across the Polish political spectrum.

Polish and Ukrainian officials hope that recovering and identifying the victims can help ease one of the most enduring sources of tension between the two countries, who are now close security partners.

The excavations follow a breakthrough in Polish-Ukrainian cooperation on historical issues after Kyiv lifted long-standing restrictions on searches and exhumations of Polish victims on Ukrainian territory. Earlier investigations at sites including Puzniki and Uhly led to the discovery of human remains. In March, Polish and Ukrainian researchers searched for a mass grave linked to the killing of Polish villagers in Uhly, while additional graves have since been identified in western Ukraine.

The issue remains one of the most sensitive in Polish-Ukrainian relations. Poland considers the Volhynia massacres and related killings of Polish civilians in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia to have been acts of genocide, while Ukraine generally rejects that characterization and emphasizes that both Poles and Ukrainians suffered during the wartime conflict. Historians estimate that tens of thousands of Polish civilians were killed between 1943 and 1945.

Despite those disagreements, both governments have sought to separate historical disputes from their strategic partnership forged in response to the Russia-Ukraine war.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk's government has made progress on exhumations a priority, while Ukrainian authorities have increasingly signaled willingness to cooperate on searches, identifications, and burials.

Polish officials argue that locating the victims and providing proper burials is a humanitarian rather than political issue. Families of those killed have spent decades seeking information about the fate of relatives buried in unmarked graves across western Ukraine.

The latest excavation campaign is expected to continue throughout the summer, with further searches planned at other former Polish settlements.