Poland's PM and president clash over credit for Volhynia exhumations on anniversary of massacre

Anniversary of the Bloody Sunday

On 11 July 2026, Poland commemorated the 83rd anniversary of the 'Krwawa niedziela' (Bloody Sunday), the day in 1943 that marked the climax of the Volhynia massacre. That day, Ukrainian nationalist partisans from the OUN and UPA, supported by civilians, launched coordinated attacks on Polish villages, killing inhabitants regardless of age or sex, with the declared aim of eliminating Poles 'to the seventh generation'. The date is now a state holiday, the National Day of Remembrance of Genocide Victims. Prime Minister Donald Tusk released a video statement on X, emphasizing that the murdered deserved dignified burials and that his government had broken the deadlock.

The murdered cannot remain nameless, without a dignified burial. Their families waited for this over 80 years.

Tusk claims breakthrough and announces a Warsaw memorial

Tusk said that as Prime Minister he had undertaken effective efforts to resume exhumations after years of inaction, enabling searches not only of Volhynia victims but all 20th-century war dead on Ukrainian territory. On the anniversary itself he unveiled a plan for a Mur Pamięci (Wall of Remembrance) in Warsaw, to be inscribed with the names of every identified victim. The move was widely seen as a strategic push into historical memory territory that had traditionally been monopolised by the right, leaving the opposition scrambling to respond.

Presidential spokesman erupts: 'Insolence!'

Within hours, Rafał Leśkiewicz, President Karol Nawrocki's spokesman and a former IPN director and spokesman, attacked Tusk on X. He wrote 'Co za bezczelność!' (What insolence!) and accused the premier of trying to claim credit for something achieved by the president.

What insolence!

Leśkiewicz argued that the fresh permits for exhumation work were a direct result of the meeting between President Nawrocki and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky on 19 December 2025 in Warsaw. He said that since that summit, the Institute of National Remembrance had obtained several permits, enabling work in Ostrówki, Wola Ostrowiecka, and Huta Pieniacka, and that the application process for further sites was ongoing.

Even on such a day, a day of reflection and prayer, the Prime Minister could not refrain from manipulation.

Defence minister declines to compete

Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, speaking from Ołyka in Ukraine, refused to be drawn into a direct contest with the president. He stressed that under the current government exhumations had indeed begun and that 11 July had been made a state holiday on their initiative. He added that he had personally decided to establish a Museum of Memory of the Volhynia Massacre as a branch of the Polish Army Museum in Chełm.

I will not compete with the President. The facts are that under our government, exhumations began and the day became a state holiday.

The longer timeline and political struggle

The dispute over who deserves credit for restarting exhumations glosses over an earlier sequence of events. The Polish outlet naTemat.pl reported that exhumation permits were already on the table in spring 2025, well before the December 2025 presidential election that brought Nawrocki to office (the vote was held on 1 June 2025). Tusk and Zelensky had met in Warsaw in January 2025, and after that meeting Tusk spoke of a breakthrough. Exhumations first resumed in Puźniki later that year. Ukraine had lifted a 2017 ban that had blocked such work. The clash on this National Day of Remembrance thus reflects a deeper battle over which political camp can claim ownership of the Volhynia legacy, with Tusk's Wall of Remembrance announcement designed to wrest control from the right.