On the eve of the 84th anniversary of the World War II mass murders, President Andrzej Duda commemorated the victims of the Soviet crime at a history museum in Warsaw.
He said during a wreath-laying ceremony that the massacre 84 years ago remained unpunished, with its perpetrators never held accountable.
He added that Russian atrocities in Ukraine today bore many similarities to the 1940 Katyn Massacre of Polish officers and intellectuals by the Soviets.
Duda reiterated his message that those responsible for Russian war crimes in Ukraine must face justice, state news agency PAP reported.
"All crimes committed against humanity, against innocent people, against those who cannot defend themselves, must be solved and punished," he said.
Duda laid a wreath at a site known as the Katyn Epitaph and lit a candle at a memorial plaque outside the Katyn Museum in Warsaw's historic Citadel complex, the PAP news agency reported.
In an earlier tribute this week, Poland's ambassador to Russia, Krzysztof Krajewski, laid flowers and lit candles at a Polish war cemetery in the Katyn Forest, near the city of Smolensk in western Russia, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.
National memorial day
On Saturday, a host of events are scheduled to take place in Poland to commemorate the victims of the 1940 Katyn Massacre.
April 13 is a national day of remembrance for the victims of the Soviet crime.
Image: Polish Radio
Almost 22,000 Polish prisoners of war were killed in the spring of 1940 on orders from top Soviet authorities, according to estimates cited by public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency.
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.
(gs)
Source: IAR, PAP