Ukraine's Education and Science Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk has said that Ukraine and Poland should mutually condemn the actions of Ukrainian organizations and Polish forces, which led to many casualties in 1943.

"Government and local officials of Ukraine should come to Polish graves, and Polish leaders to the graves of Ukrainians who died in 1943 and they should talk about the mutual tragedy. It seems to me that it is necessary that the Ukrainian side should condemn the cruelty on the part of Ukrainian organizations, and the Polish side, probably in a mutual document, should also condemn the brutality and lawlessness towards children and women, which the Polish armed forces have shown – this is the only step towards reconciliation," Tabachnyk said on Shuster Live talk show on Inter TV Channel on in Friday night.

He recalled that in 2003, the presidents of Ukraine and Poland passed a joint declaration on the reconciliation on the 60th anniversary of the tragic events in Volyn.

"Ten years after, we should supplement the formula that we constructed together in 2003 – 'we forgive and ask for forgiveness' with a stronger political formula 'we are asking for forgiveness and forgive.' That would be the next step to overcome the consequences of the Volyn tragedy," Dmytro Tabachnyk has said.

As reported, the Polish Senate on Thursday adopted a statement on the 70th anniversary of the Volyn tragedy in which these events were called "ethnic cleansing with signs of genocide and the victims of the anti-Polish campaign by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army included about 100,000 Poles. Fifty-five out of a hundred senators supported the document, and 20 voted against it.

At the same time, the document notes that after the fall of communism, Poland and Ukraine did much to overcome the difficult past, whereas "the Poles want reconciliation and friendship with Ukrainians," but "real reconciliation can be built only on truth and the general condemnation of the crime."

The Senate rejected the proposal by Law and Justice Party deputies to directly use the term "genocide" in the statement.