Polish President Andrzej Duda today compared the atrocities committed by Russian forces in Buka during the invasion of Ukraine to the Katyn massacre, marking the 80th anniversary of the discovery of the massacre of thousands of Polish officers by the Soviets at the time of Stalin.

80 years ago, the Nazis discovered in the Katyn forest, located in Russia’s Smolensk region, the bodies of thousands of Polish officers executed by the Soviet political police in 1940, a massacre the Kremlin refused to acknowledge until the 1990s .

“This is one of the most tragic episodes in our history, which cast a very heavy shadow on Russian-Polish relations,” President Duda said after laying a wreath in memory of the victims of the Katyn massacre in Warsaw.

“Today, we look with horror… at all the reports, videos and photos from Buka and other Russian-held places in Ukraine, where people were murdered in the same way as in Katyn,” he added.

Kyiv prosecutors say Russian forces killed around 1,400 civilians in the Buka sector, north of Kyiv, where the bodies were discovered after Russian forces withdrew in late March 2022.

Bukha has since become a symbol of the war crimes committed by the Russian military after the invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.

“The perpetrators of the crimes committed by the Russians in Ukraine over the past year must be held accountable so that crimes like the Katyn massacre, like the crimes committed by the Russians in Ukraine today, never happen again.” added the Polish president.

The Katyn massacre is linked to another tragedy, the crash of the plane carrying Polish President Lech Kaczynski while landing at Smolensk airport in 2010.

The Polish delegation, which in addition to the head of state also included many officials, was to attend a commemoration of the massacre in Katyn. All 96 passengers on board were killed.

The cause of the plane crash has been the subject of controversies that have divided Poland, with Polish right-wing circles citing a version of the attack that has been dismissed as a conspiracy theory by the rest of society.