Head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance Anton Drobovych has said that Ukraine did not send requests for new search and exhumation works on the territory of Poland because it is asking to restore the destroyed sites first.

"The situation with Ukrainian burials in Poland needs to be additionally studied, but the data available to us show a number of acts of vandalism, a significant part of which has not been fixed yet. […] It is a difficult situation," he told a press conference in Kyiv on Thursday.

According to the head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, if problematic issues related to Ukrainian and Polish burials were addressed in a constructive and pragmatic manner, they would have been taken as economic issues that could be solved within one or two seasons at a minimum cost.

"Restoration of the destroyed memorial plaque on the Monastir Mountain in Poland could take a week. And if there are people in the great Republic of Poland who are ready to stop this shame and desecration as well as to restore justice and the desecrated Ukrainian memorial site, which has been like this in Poland for ten years soon, this could be done in a few days," he said.

Drobovych also noted that the Institute has not heard yet any statements from the Polish side about its intention to restore Ukrainian memorial sites, not to mention future guarantees of their preservation. He also said that during his five-year term Ukraine did not request any search or land works on the territory of Poland, instead it asked to restore the existing and vandalized sites.

"What is the point in requesting search works to find the remains, exhume them and create new memorial sites if the already created ones were crashed with a sledgehammer and thrown in dumpsters?" he said.

As reported, Polish President Andrzej Duda said in September that attempts to block Ukraine's accession to the European Union play into the hands of Vladimir Putin's policies. He said this while commenting on the statement by Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz that Ukraine cannot join the EU without resolving the "Volyn issue."

On October 2, the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance announced that they plan to conduct search operations for victims of the Volyn tragedy in 2025. The Institute also stated that they remain open to cooperation with Polish institutions in the field of searching, preserving and caring for places of memory of Ukrainians in Poland and Poles in Ukraine, and also complained that official inter-institutional mechanisms for resolving problematic issues with the Polish side in matters of restoration and preservation of places of memory have not been in effect for a long time.

On November 26, the Ukrainian and Polish foreign ministers, Andriy Sybiha and Radoslaw Sikorski, after negotiations in Warsaw, agreed on a joint statement, which, in particular, said that the parties "are determined to resolve contentious issues of the common past."

On November 27, Head of the Institute of National Remembrance of Poland Karol Nawrocki said the Polish side was awaiting Ukraine's approval of previously submitted requests for search and exhumation work for the victims of Volyn tragedy, and is ready to begin the search within 24 hours. At the same time, Drobovych said that Ukraine had asked the Institute of National Remembrance of Poland to provide a list and specifics on the desired locations of search and exhumation works, but had not yet received a response.