Search begins in Rivne region for suspected WWII burial site of Ukrainians and Poles

Search operations have begun in the Rivne region at a site believed to contain the remains of Ukrainian and Polish villagers killed during World War II.

According to Ukrinform, the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine reported that the work is underway in the village of Uhly, part of the Sarny urban community.

The request to conduct the search in Uhly was initiated by Karolina Romanowska, head of the Polish-Ukrainian Reconciliation Association. The expedition is being carried out in partnership with the Pomeranian Medical University. The work is conducted by the municipal enterprise Dolya with permission from the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine and in cooperation with Polish specialists.

Officials say the search is only the first stage. It will be followed by exhumation, identification of remains, and dignified reburial.

The work is being conducted in line with agreements of the Ukrainian-Polish working group on historical memory, set out in a joint communique adopted in 2025. These commitments were also reaffirmed during a meeting between Presidents Volodymyr Zelensky and Karol Nawrocki in December 2025 in Warsaw.

In May 1943, some residents of Uhly – both Polish and Ukrainian – were killed in an armed attack. The suspected burial site is located near a former Evangelical cemetery, where residents of German settlements were buried in the early 20th century. The exact number of victims and the circumstances of the tragedy remain unknown.

The village of Uhly, now part of the Sarny community in the Rivne region, belonged in the 1920s-1930s to the Stepan gmina of the Kostopil county in the Volhynian Voivodeship of the Second Polish Republic, where a significant Polish population lived at the time.

Photo: mincult.gov.ua