Poland criticises head of Ukrainian state history institute for downplaying WWII massacres

Feb 11, 2026 | History, Politics

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Poland’s state Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) has criticised the head of its Ukrainian counterpart after he called the Volhynia massacres, in which around 100,000 Poles were killed by Ukrainian nationalists, part of a “Polish grand narrative”.

He also said that they are viewed in Ukraine as a “local historical episode” and suggested they did not constitute a genocide, as Poland believes.

The clash marks the latest episode in a long-running dispute over how to assess the history of the massacres, which took place during World War Two. The issue has regularly caused tension between two otherwise close allies, though recent times have also seen progress towards reconciliation.

On Tuesday, media outlet Ukrainska Pravda published a wide-ranging interview with Oleksandr Alferov, who was appointed as head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory (UINM) in June last year. One of the issues he spoke about extensively was the Volhynia massacres.

Asked if there was a chance for the issue to be removed from political debate and left to academics to discuss, Alferov said that this was “unfortunately unlikely” because “the Volhynia tragedy is one of Poland’s state myths”.

He then appeared to correct himself, saying it was “not a myth, but one of the key elements of the Polish grand narrative”.

By contrast, “for most Ukrainians, this is just a local episode of history, because it was only in Volhynia, and the Poles who left later settled throughout Poland”, explained Alferov. Volhynia is a historic region located in what is now northwestern Ukraine, southeastern Poland, and southwestern Belarus.

During the Volhynia massacres, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a partisan formation still celebrated by many in today’s Ukraine, killed ethnic Poles in areas the UPA wanted to be part of a Ukrainian state.

The majority of victims were women and children, and the massacres were often carried out with particular brutality. Poland has officially recognised the episode as a genocide. However, Ukraine rejects that designation.

In his interview, Alferov pointed to historical research showing that “over 28,000 Ukrainians were also killed in this conflict [with Poles]”. He then asked: “Can the events be called genocide if there are victims on both sides?”

 

Later on Tuesday, Poland’s IPN, a state institution dedicated to documenting Poland’s history during World War Two and the postwar decades of Moscow-imposed communist rule, said that Alferov’s comments were “outrageous”.

“The Volhynia genocide is a documented fact that cannot be invalidated by the language of narrative, relativisation or political calculation,” wrote the IPN.

“The scale of the crime does not cease to be a crime simply because it occurred in a specific territory,” they continued. “Over 100,000 murdered Polish citizens – mostly women, children and the elderly – is not an ‘episode’, but rather one of the largest genocides against civilians in 20th-century Europe.”

The IPN also said that the fact that “the contemporary Ukrainian state builds elements of its identity on the cult of individuals and organisations responsible for these crimes, rejecting the facts recorded in publicly available historical sources, is also disturbing”.

Recent years have seen moves towards reconciliation between Poland and Ukraine over World War Two history. In an important symbolic moment, the two countries’ then-presidents, Andrzej Duda and Volodymyr Zelensky, in 2023 jointly commemorated the 80th anniversary of the massacres.

Last year, Ukraine also lifted its ban on the exhumation of victims of the massacres, tens of thousands of whom are believed to remain buried in unmarked mass graves.

In his interview, Alferov said that he was “sure that, after the permission for the exhumation is granted, the topic will subside over time”. He said that Ukraine had “shown decency by granting permission” for the exhumations to take place.

However, in its response to his comments, the Polish IPN warned that “true reconciliation can only be based on truth”, including “the Ukrainian state unequivocally condemning the perpetrators of the Volhynia massacres”.

The dispute over the massacres is more than just symbolic. In 2024, a Polish deputy prime minister said that Poland would not allow Ukraine to be admitted to the European Union until the two countries “resolve” their differences over Volhynia.

That position was also expressed last year by the current president, Karol Nawrocki, when, while campaigning for the presidency, he said that he “currently does not envision Ukraine in either the EU or NATO until important civilisational issues for Poland are resolved”.

Last year, the Ukrainian government criticised Poland’s plans to establish a new national holiday commemorating victims of the massacres, saying that the idea “flies in the face of the spirit of good neighbourly relations”.


Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: UdSKiOR (under CC BY-SA 4.0)

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