Polish official: Ukraine 'cannot dream' of EU without resolving Volyn victims exhumations.

Ukraine "cannot dream of joining the European Union" without resolving the issue of the exhumation of Volyn massacre victims' remains on Ukrainian territory, Polish Foreign Ministry's Undersecretary of State Pawel Jablonski said on Nov.

7. "In my opinion, without a solution to this issue - and many Ukrainians are already aware of this - Ukraine cannot dream of joining the European Union," the official of the outgoing Polish government said in an interview with Radio ZET. "Therefore, we will absolutely emphasize that without a solution to this issue, there will be no long-term reconciliation with Ukraine."

When asked directly whether the issue of exhumations would be a condition of Warsaw's backing for Kyiv's EU accession, Jablonski answered he does "not like talking about conditions" but added that cooperation would be difficult without resolving the problem.

Zelensky, Duda commemorate victims of Volyn Massacre in Lutsk On July 9, President Volodymyr Zelensky and his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda commemorated the victims of the 1943 Volyn (Volhynia) Massacre during their surprise visit to Lutsk, a regional capital in northwestern Ukraine.

In the spring and summer of 1943, members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the military branch of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), massacred thousands of Poles in Nazi-occupied Volyn in Poland, a region that is now part of western Ukraine. Ukrainian historian Serhii Plokhy, director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, estimates that the number of Polish victims of the massacre varies from 60,000 to 90,000, while estimates of Ukrainians killed in retaliation stand somewhere between 15,000 to 30,000.

Since 2016, July 11, referred to as "Bloody Sunday" in the resolution, has been recognized in Poland as the National Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Genocide. Ukraine denies the term genocide to describe the massacre. President Volodymyr Zelensky promised in 2019 to lift the Ukrainian moratorium on the exhumation of Volyn victims, imposed in reaction to cases of destruction of UPA memorials in Poland.

Poland's head of state, Andrzej Duda, said in August that obtaining permission for the exhumations plays a crucial role in Polish-Ukrainian relations.

The origins of 'Slava Ukraini' In early March 2023, a video surfaced online showing the execution of a Ukrainian prisoner of war. The unarmed soldier's last words were "Slava Ukraini" - a Ukrainian national salute that means "Glory to Ukraine" - before he was shot multiple times and collapsed to his death.

Ukrainian officials co...