Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a surprise visit to Warsaw this morning to hold talks with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
The two leaders discussed Polish-Ukrainian bilateral relations, Polish support for Ukraine and a long-standing dispute over the exhumation of Polish victims of massacres by Ukrainian nationalists during World War II.
Poland has been one of Ukraine's staunchest supporters since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, welcoming more than one million Ukrainian refugees.
Since then, Poland has provided more than €4.5bn in aid to Ukraine, of which €3.2bn has been military aid.
Both the previous Polish government, led by the nationalist Law and Justice party, and the current coalition government in Warsaw under Mr Tusk have also lent strong support to Ukraine’s bids to join the European Union and NATO.
Protests by Polish farmers over Ukrainian grain imports during 2023 strained the relationship somewhat in the run up to a general election in Poland that year, with the previous Law and Justice-led government threatening to halt military aid to Ukraine at one point over the grain issue.
However, a historical dispute over the exhumation of Polish victims of massacres by Ukrainian nationalists during World War II has proved a much more contentious issue for successive governments in Kyiv and Warsaw.
Polish historians and the country's Institute of National Remembrance estimate that around 100,000 Polish civilians were murdered by Ukrainian nationalists between 1943 and 1945 in the historical provinces of Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, which, prior to World War II, were part of the Polish Second Republic.
Occupied by Germany during the war, most of the area was incorporated into Ukraine’s new borders in 1945, as part of the Soviet Union.
According to the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), between 10,000 and 12,000 Ukrainians were killed by Poles in retaliatory acts.
Poland has long demanded that the victims be exhumed and given proper burials.
"We are finding common language and methods to act together when it comes to the issues of the Volhynia crime and the sensitive, dramatic issues in our history," Mr Tusk told reporters at today's press conference alongside Mr Zelensky.
Mr Tusk, who is also an historian, stressed that he did not want the exhumations issue to be used for political gain within Poland.
Political commentators in Poland have suggested the issue of Volhynia may become a campaign issue in this May's Polish presidential election.
Presidential candidate and historian Karol Nawrocki, who is backed by Law and Justice, has led calls for the exhumation of victims remains to take place. He is currently the president of the IPN.
Mr Zelensky said during today's press conference that Ukrainian and Polish culture ministries were "moving forward" on the exhumations issue.
"The Volhynia massacres were done by Ukrainian nationalists who constitute a significant part of the nationalistic memory in Ukraine. It's very difficult for Ukrainians to admit that there was a genocide or ethnic cleansing going on in Volhynia," Adam Leszczyński, a Polish historian, told RTÉ News.
The massacres, he said, were of "huge symbolic importance" to Polish people.
"It is probably the last wartime crime that still needs some closure like an official statement from the Ukrainian side".
In July 2023, Mr Zelensky and Polish President Andrzej Duda attended a Catholic service in western Ukraine to commemorate all victims of the Volhynia massacres.
Rzeczpospolita, a Polish newspaper, reported earlier this week that the Polish Institute of National Remembrance and Ukrainian archaeologists plan to begin exhumations in April at one site in western Ukraine where victims are buried.
On Ukraine's application to join the EU, Mr Tusk said that Poland would work to accelerate Kyiv's application process.
"It's not only a matter of helping Ukraine," said Mr Tusk, adding that supporting Ukraine was "helping the EU too".
Referring to recent sabotage attacks on cables in the Baltic Sea, Mr Tusk said that Western allies should work closely together. He also claimed that Russia had been planning attacks against airlines around the world, but gave no further details.
The Ukrainian president’s visit to the Polish capital took place on a day when Russia launched large-scale drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian energy sites, and Mr Zelensky opened his remarks by highlighting that Russian attacks this morning were directed at the Lviv region, close to the Polish border.
"For us Polish support has always been important and we need to move forward," Mr Zelensky told reporters.
Mr Leszczyński, who is the director of Poland's Institute for Political Thinking, said that the past 30 years had "brought a lot of cooperation" between Poland and Ukraine over the issue of addressing the Volhynia massacres.
"We are getting closer to some mutually accepted version of what happened."
