Polish President Andrzej Duda said Sunday he would hold the Katyn massacre, in which Stalinist police killed nearly 22,000 Poles in 1940, accountable.
“Genocide has no statute of limitations. That is why I will insist that this case be resolved by international tribunals. We will soon start a petition,” Duda said in a speech marking the 82nd anniversary of the massacre, noting Russia’s brutal aggression against independent and democratic Ukraine.”
“This crime must be finally condemned and its perpetrators must be identified,” Duda added, without specifying which court he intends to apply to and who the accused will be.
The date also marks the 12th anniversary of the plane crash near Smolensk that killed 96 people on April 10, 2010, including Polish President Lech Kaczynski, who was traveling to Russia to commemorate the victims of the Katyn Massacre.
After the invasion of the USSR in September 1939, in the eastern regions of Poland, according to the German-Soviet pact, 22 thousand Polish officers, captured Red Army soldiers, were shot in the Katyn forest.
For decades, the Soviet Union blamed the Nazis for this massacre. It wasn’t until April 1990 that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged Russia’s responsibility.
“It was a genocide committed by the Soviets against completely defenseless victims. This crime was never punished. Instead, we received lies about Katyn,” Duda said.
He referred to a “short episode in the early 1990s under President Boris Yeltsin, when it was finally acknowledged that ‘Stalin’s authorities’ were responsible for the Katyn massacre”.
But, Duda continued, “No further action was taken. The Katyn investigation was closed and none of those responsible were punished. While Putin’s Russia once again glorified Stalin and the Soviet Union for decades. Katyn’s lie,” the Polish president said.