Poland treats the killing of about 100,000 Poles in Volhynia by the OUN and UPA as genocide

Background

Between 1943 and 1945 the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army carried out ethnic cleansing in which nearly 100,000 Poles were killed, many of them women and children. In July 1943 UPA units attacked about 150 Polish settlements in Volhynia. Poland describes these killings as genocide, while many Ukrainian historians and politicians treat them as part of a wider conflict in which both sides bore blame. In Ukrainian memory the UPA is associated with the struggle for independence and with postwar resistance to Soviet rule. Poland's Institute of National Remembrance has described Shukhevych as an architect of the genocide in Volhynia.