Polish President Andrzej Duda on Thursday compared the abuses committed by Russian forces in Boutcha to the Katyn massacre, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the discovery of this killing of thousands of Polish officers committed by the Soviets at the time of Stalin. 80 years ago, the Nazis discovered in the Katyn forest located in the Smolensk region of Russia the bodies of thousands of Polish officers executed by the Soviet political police in 1940, a massacre that the Kremlin refused to recognize until in the 1990s.
“This is one of the most tragic episodes in our history, casting a terrible shadow over Russian-Polish relations,” President Duda said after laying a wreath in memory of the victims of the Katyn massacre in Warsaw. “Today we watch in horror…all the reports, videos and photos from Boutcha and other places in Russian-occupied Ukraine where people were murdered in the same way as in Katyn,” he said. -he adds.
Kiev prosecutors say Russian forces killed some 1,400 civilians in the area of Boutcha, north of Kyiv, where the bodies were discovered after Russian troops withdrew in late March 2022. Boutcha has since become a symbol of the crimes of war committed by the Russian army since the start of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
