President Andrzej Duda has honoured the memory of Poles killed from the hands of Ukrainian nationalists in Volhynia 73 years ago.

Monument to the Victims of the Volhynia Massacre in Warsaw. Photo: PAP/Tomasz Gzell

On Monday, Duda marked the anniversary placing a memorial candle at the monument to the Victims of the Volhynia Massacre in Warsaw.

On 11 July 1943, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) carried out a coordinated attack on some 100 villages largely inhabited by the Polish population in the region of Eastern Galicia and Volhynia. The region of Volhynia, which had lain within Polish borders prior to World War II, was first occupied by the Soviets in 1939, and then by the Nazi Germans in 1941.

Some 100,000 ethnic Poles were slaughtered from 1943 to 1944 by Ukraine’s guerrilla force that sought Ukrainian independence.

Passed over in silence after the war by the communist authorities, this ethnic cleansing operation has been considered an act of genocide by Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance.

Last week, the Polish Senate passed a resolution declaring 11 July a National Rememberance Day for Victims of Genocide by Ukrainian nationalists.

On Friday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko paid tribute to the victims of the ethnic cleansing at the commemorative monument in Warsaw.