By Olha Hembik | 2026-03-27

In the spring of 1940, Soviet secret police shot 22,000 Polish officers in the back of the head and buried them in mass graves. No one was ever punished. The killers retired with medals. And for 85 years, the bill went unpaid.

Poland is now presenting it.

The government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk has launched a large-scale investigation as the foundation for a landmark legal claim against Russia, covering Soviet war crimes, population losses, and the annexation of eastern territories after 1945.

Bartosz Gondek, director of the Jan Karski Institute for War Losses, leads a team of roughly 10 historians and researchers tasked with a "meticulous analysis of political repression, economic losses, and systemic human rights violations" during more than four decades of Soviet control.

The team has already hit obstacles. Soviet authorities destroyed or falsified many critical documents, and Polish historians have no access to classified Russian archives. State Secretary Jakub Stefaniak has called for gathering testimony from elderly survivors before it is too late.

Gondek said the undertaking will exceed in scope the institute's earlier investigation into Nazi crimes. Poland previously sought 6.2 trillion zlotys (approximately $1.59 trillion) in reparations from Germany for World War II damages -- a claim Berlin rejected, citing a 1953 waiver. The new claim is expected to be higher and more complex to calculate.

The Katyn thread

The massacre that opened this story did not stay buried quietly. For decades, Moscow blamed the Katyn killings on German troops. In 2010, the Russian parliament finally acknowledged that Joseph Stalin had personally ordered the executions. But in Russia today, Katyn is once again being labeled a "Nazi provocation against the USSR." Last year, bas-reliefs were removed from graves at the Mednoye Memorial Complex near Tver, where 6,500 of the executed officers lie.

"The forest near the village of Katyn, near Smolensk, became the symbol of this crime. In this location alone, more than 4,000 victims were killed," Robert Czyżewski, a Polish expert and former director of the Polish Institute in Kyiv, told Kontur.

"Today, amidst the war in Ukraine, we are seeing the ominous consequences of a crime left unpunished. The executioners of Katyn were never brought to justice. They left this world decorated with medals for their 'merits,' sending a signal to Russian society that such actions are permissible," he said.

A precedent for Ukraine

Experts say Poland is sending a signal to Europe, not only the Kremlin, and opening a new front against Russia in the realm of their shared past.

Viktor Litvinchuk, head of the Ternopil Center for Local Self-Government Development, told Kontur that Poland is doing more than launching a historical process. Warsaw is trying to "reshape the very framework of post-war European history."

The argument at the center of the suit, Litvinchuk said, is that after 1945 Poland was not a sovereign partner but an occupied state. The Polish People's Republic was "formally an ally of the USSR, but in fact, remained under its thumb."

Moscow's refusal to open its archives is itself a tell.

Russia uses classified documents "as a political weapon," Litvinchuk argued. "Russia is hiding historical facts, and that means its position is weakening."

Litvinchuk described the lawsuit as a "prologue to the reparations for the Russia-Ukraine war."

"Everyone understands that Russia will not pay. However, Warsaw is establishing a political and legal precedent for future claims against the Russian Federation," he said.

If Europe legally recognizes the long-term damage caused by Soviet control, it becomes easier to build the case for future Ukrainian war reparations -- and Russia will increasingly be seen not as the "successor to the victory" but as a "source of enduring damage to its neighbors."

Polish historian Andrzej Bęben told Kontur the case will help establish the principle of state accountability, bolster political pressure on the aggressor, and strengthen Ukraine's position in future international tribunals.

International law recognizes no statute of limitations for war crimes, he noted, cementing "the principle of inevitable accountability -- both financial and legal."

The Kremlin's response came from Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, who, in her characteristic style, mockingly suggested sending Poland "a link to a video of the opera Ivan Susanin" -- a reference to the legend of a Russian peasant who led Polish troops to their deaths in a swamp in 1613.

Russian commentators have already labeled Warsaw's initiative a manifestation of Russophobia.