A ceremony to re-bury the remains of 42 people discovered during exhumation work in the former village of Puzhnyky has commenced in Ternopil Oblast, with Ukrainian and Polish officials and approximately 40 descendants of former village residents participating, reports Ukrinform correspondent from the scene.
The Ukrainian delegation includes acting Minister of Culture and Strategic Communications Tetyana Berezhna, Deputy Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Olena Kondratiuk, Deputy Foreign Minister Oleksandr Mishchenko, and Ukrainian Institute of National Memory head Oleksandr Alfyorov.
Poland’s delegation is led by Senate Marshal Malgorzata Kidawa-Blonska and includes Culture and National Heritage Minister Marta Cenkowska, Acting Charge d’Affaires Piotr Lukasevich, and Consul General in Lutsk Anna Nowakowska.
“Today we are not talking about history, not about politics – today we are talking about humanity and that we are taking a step towards each other in an extremely complex historical topic. Ukraine ensures dignified commemoration of all war victims – regardless of nationality or the antiquity of the tragedy,” UINM head Oleksandr Alfyorov said.
The ceremony included a Roman Catholic holy mass. Memorial markers will remain unnamed for now as DNA research continues, according to Professor Andrzej Ossowski, a geneticist from the Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin who leads the Polish scientific team.
“We should receive the first identification results by the end of this year. We have DNA profiles of all remains, we are still examining individual ones, and we also have DNA from their family members living in Poland. Given that there are close relatives among the victims, personal identification of remains requires very complex mathematical calculations,” Ossowski explained.
The geneticist noted that while they know they have remains from specific families, personal identification requires time.
“Further identification results will depend on whether we find their relatives (meaning living ones), because without them there will be no way to identify everyone. We don’t have relatives of all victims and are currently searching for their families,” he added.
The discovered remains will be re-buried at the original burial site where exhumation work was conducted – at the old cemetery in the former village of Puzhnyky.
Exhumation operations in the territory of former Puzhnyky village lasted from 23 April to 5 May 2025. The joint Ukrainian-Polish expedition worked under professional and security supervision of the Ukrainian side. DNA research on the remains was conducted in Poland.
Negotiations between Ukraine and Poland regarding the exhumation work continued from the previous year. In late November 2024, during a joint press conference by Polish and Ukrainian Foreign Ministers Radoslaw Sikorski and Andrii Sybiha, the lifting of the moratorium on searching for and exhuming remains of Polish citizens buried on Ukrainian territory was announced. The moratorium had been in effect since 2017.
In January 2025, Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications granted permission for the Puzhnyky exhumation.