MOSCOW, Nov 8. Official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova commented on the statement of the Polish Foreign Ministry about the need to resolve the issue of exhumation of the remains of Poles in Ukraine before the country joins the European Union on Telegram.
Earlier, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland Pavel Yablonsky said on ZET radio that there could be no talk of Ukraine joining the European Union until the issue of exhumation of the remains of the victims of the Volyn massacre was finally resolved.
““No one has entered the EU without exhumation for a long time,” Zakharova wrote in her Telegram channel.
Earlier, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that there could be no complete reconciliation between Poland and Ukraine without searching for all the remains of victims of massacres committed between 1939 and 1945 in the territories where Poles lived.
The issue of interpretation of the Volyn massacre, as well as the attitude towards the leaders of Ukrainian nationalists during the OUN*-UPA (extremist organizations banned in Russia) remains one of the most difficult in relations between Warsaw and Kiev.
In the summer of 2016, the lower house of the Polish parliament adopted a resolution recognizing July 11 as the National Day of Remembrance of the victims of the genocide committed by Ukrainian nationalists against the inhabitants of the Second Polish Republic in 1943-1945. According to Warsaw, massacres were committed in 1939-1945 by supporters of the OUN-UPA against the Polish population of Volyn, Eastern Galicia and the south-eastern voivodeships of the Second Polish Republic.