Poland tells Ukraine to exhume WW2 victims even amid Russia’s war

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Ukraine should exhume and rebury ethnic Poles massacred on its territory and Germany should invest in military co-operation and compensate Polish victims of the Nazis, Poland’s foreign minister has said.

Radosław Sikorski told the Financial Times that historic grievances could not be brushed aside even in the midst of Russia’s war against Ukraine, citing the 1940s Volhynia massacres of about 100,000 ethnic Poles.

“People are entitled to a Christian burial, and it doesn’t affect Ukraine’s war effort,” the foreign minister said. “I don’t see why [exhumations] should be blocked between countries that help one another.” 

Sikorski’s comments reflect a toughening of the Polish government’s tone on historical issues ahead of a presidential election in May that could be crucial to unlocking the reform agenda of Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

Ukraine’s Institute of National Memory said recently it would be willing to renew searches for Polish victims in mass burial sites next year. Kyiv halted the process in 2017 to protest against the removal of a Ukrainian memorial located in Poland.

Kyiv has also been disputing a 2016 decision by the Polish parliament to describe the massacres as genocide and has more recently been upset by warnings from Warsaw that this historical issue, if unresolved, could derail Ukraine’s bid for EU membership.

“There was a lot of expectation that the current Polish government will be more pro-European, more pro-Ukrainian, but the issue that they put on the agenda, about the historical past, is the same as the previous government,” said Andrii Deshchytsia, a former Ukrainian ambassador to Poland.

This was a “bitter disappointment for Ukrainian society” Deshchytsia said. “Nobody will resolve this Volhynia issue if we do not win the war and if Ukraine will not become a member of the EU.”

Sikorski said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had in July “missed an opportunity” to meet reparations demands presented by Tusk as an alternative to the previous Polish rightwing Law and Justice (PiS) government’s €1.3tn claim for damages and crimes committed by Nazi Germany.

Tusk asked for a Polish memorial to be created in Berlin, for German investment in military co-operation and also for some unspecified amount of money to compensate Polish victims of the Nazis.

Scholz offered only €200mn in compensation and no plan to invest in common defence, Sikorski said. “Tusk essentially said that €200mn on its own will not persuade the Polish people . . . and I think he was right,” he said.

Tusk hopes a candidate from his ruling coalition will replace outgoing President Andrzej Duda, a PiS nominee who has used his veto powers to block Tusk’s legislation and his attempts to replace PiS-appointed judges.

PiS is expected to name its candidate next month, after which Tusk will announce his own nominee. “I’m one of many possible candidates to be a candidate,” Sikorski said with a wry smile, when asked whether he wanted to stand.

Tusk recently ruled himself out of the contest to become president, but some observers recall a similar disclaimer he made about leaving Warsaw shortly before he moved to Brussels to become president of the European Council in 2014. Asked about Tusk’s claim not to want the presidency, Sikorski said: “I just think this time it’s for real”.

Sikorski acknowledged Tusk’s government was now “more or less” aligned with Duda and the PiS on wartime grievances. Recent opinion polls show a majority of Poles want reparations from Germany while public sentiment has soured towards Ukraine. 

Only 53 per cent still favour welcoming Ukrainian refugees, the lowest since the arrival of hundreds of thousands fleeing Russia’s invasion in February 2022, according to a poll this month by the Public Opinion Research Center. 

“I think there is still solid support for assisting Ukraine in its defensive war against Russia: people think we should help Ukraine, but people also think that our dead should be buried,” Sikorski said. Even if not every Pole worried daily about exhumations, “some do”, he added.