Speaking on the 12th anniversary of the presidential plane crash in Smolensk, western Russia, the Polish head of state said: "Genocide has no statute of limitations. Therefore, I will demand that this case be settled before international courts. We will submit appropriate motions in the nearest future."
"I will also take all possible diplomatic steps to ensure that the world does not forget about the Katyn crime and consistently condemns its perpetrators," Duda said.
By the same token, the Polish President pointed out, Poland "will also lend support to Ukraine in all legal and diplomatic efforts to punish the perpetrators of the crimes which are now being committed by Russians."
"The Katyn Massacre has come to be inextricably associated with the Smolensk Air Disaster (...), the greatest tragedy in the post–war history of Poland. Very much like in Katyn, in Smolensk the Polish elites lost their lives," President Duda said in his Sunday address.
Following the Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, thousands of Polish officers were deported to camps in the Soviet Union.
POWs from camps in Kozelsk, Starobelsk and Ostashkov as well as Poles held in prisons run by the Soviet Union's NKVD secret police were among those murdered in April 1940.
Moscow for decades denied responsibility for the Katyn Massacre, while the topic was taboo when Poland after the war remained under Soviet control until 1989.
Sunday marked exactly 12 years since a Polish plane carrying President Lech Kaczyński, his wife and 94 others, including top political and military figures, crashed near Smolensk, western Russia, killing all those on board.
The officials on the ill-fated flight had been on their way to commemorate some 22,000 Polish prisoners of war and intellectuals who were killed in the Katyn Massacre.
(ał)
Source: PAP