From 4 to 10 November, specialists will search for the remains of residents who were killed in February 1945 on the site of the former village of Puzhnyky, now part of the village of Sadove in the Ternopil region.
This was reported by the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance.
The work is being carried out by the company “Volyn Antiquities” together with Polish specialists from the Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin, the “Freedom and Democracy” Foundation, and Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance. The work is taking place under agreements reached by the Ukrainian-Polish working group on dignified burials.
For professional oversight and consultation, the UINR has engaged specialists from the Ivano-Frankivsk municipal enterprise “Memory”.
Last year, during an exhumation in April–May, specialists found the remains of 42 people, who were ceremonially reburied in September 2025 at Puzhnyky’s old cemetery with the participation of Ukrainian and Polish delegations. Other search work carried out in 2026 did not uncover any new burial sites.
- According to the UINR, representatives of the Polish ethnic community lived compactly in Puzhnyky between the world wars. In February 1945, the village came under armed attack. According to archival sources, some residents were tragically killed, and the village itself was burned down.
- In June 1945, Puzhnyky’s residents were resettled to Poland (the localities of Nemysłowice and Ratowice). In 1949, the Soviet authorities liquidated the village. The area remained uninhabited thereafter and gradually became overgrown with forest.
- Meanwhile, in October, search investigations were completed in the village of Laskiv in Poland’s Lublin Voivodeship, during which specialists discovered mass and individual burials. Preliminary assessments indicate that the remains of more than 40 people, including women, children and men, are located in the area examined.
- According to historical data, the mass killing of Ukrainians in Laskiv took place on 10 March 1944. Ukrainian and Polish historians have established the names of 327 village residents who died that year, although some researchers estimate the number of victims at around 350. Experts will determine the final death toll during further research.
- Ukraine’s Ambassador to Poland Vasyl Bodnar complained to journalists in August this year that the Ukrainian side has been unable for several months to obtain even a single permit from Warsaw to carry out search work.
- Last year, Ukrainian researchers carried out excavations in the village of Yurechkova in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship. Specialists were then trying to find the presumed grave of UPA members who were killed in March 1947 in a battle with Polish military units. During those excavations, researchers dug 19 search trenches, but they still did not find any burials or traces of a grave.