Polish Senate Adopts Bill Recognizing Volhynia Massacre as Genocide

The Polish Senate, the parliament’s upper house, adopted a resolution recognizing Volhynia mass ethnic cleansing during World War II as genocide and declared July 11 the Remembrance Day for the victims.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The resolution was reportedly proposed by the ruling PiS party and adopted by the senate late on Thursday.

"The Senate of the Republic of Poland pays tribute to the residents of the Second Republic of Poland, brutally killed by Ukrainian nationalists,” the resolution said, as quoted by the PAP news agency.

Poland believes that the Ukrainian Insurgent Army nationalists committed genocide against Polish citizens of the Second Republic of Poland in 1939-1945. The violence culminated on July 11, 1943 — the so-called Volhynia massacre — when some 150 Polish settlements were attacked by the Ukrainians.

Earlier in June, Ukrainian vice-prime minister for european integration said that Kiev will apologize to Warsaw for the massacres of Poles in Volhynia peaked in 1943 if historians prove that then leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) Roman Shukhevych was responsible for the tragedy.