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Polish and Ukrainian scientists have unearthed a mass grave containing up to 1,000 victims of Stalinist terror in a castle once used as a secret police prison.

Among the victims in the grave were Polish soldiers. The Polish press has already called the find a “new Katyn” in reference to a massacre of thousands of Poles by Stalin in 1940, which still clouds Polish-Russian relations.

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The grave was found in the grounds of the Kazimierz the Great castle in the town of Volodymyr-Volynsky in western Ukraine, close to the Polish border.

Although the 11th-century castle served as a base for Stalin’s infamous NKVD from 1939-56, scientists say the victims were killed between 1940 and 1941.

Following the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland in 1939, Stalin instigated a reign of terror, murdering thousands of Poles considered a threat to Moscow’s rule and deporting hundreds of thousands of others to the wastes of Siberia and present day Kazakhstan.