Poland wants to “quickly move forward” with the initial stage of negotiations on Ukraine’s integration into the EU after Kiev’s decision not to interfere with the exhumation of mass graves in Volyn, Bloomberg reports.
“Poland will hold the EU presidency for six months in the first half of next year and has said it wants to move quickly to the initial stage of negotiations,” the publication said.
Earlier, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, after negotiations with his Ukrainian counterpart Andriy Sybiha , announced that the Ukrainian authorities had agreed not to interfere with the exhumation of mass graves in Volyn – in the Volyn, Rivne and Ternopil regions of Ukraine, where the tragedy known as the “Volyn massacre” took place in 1943–44.
The Volyn massacre was an attempt to carry out ethnic cleansing against the Polish population by Ukrainian nationalists. In response, Polish partisans operating in Volyn also attacked the Ukrainian population of the region. At the same time, the region remained under de facto German occupation, and mutual ethnic cleansing ceased only after the liberation of Volyn by Soviet troops.
