by Olha Hembik | 2026-06-11

When the coffins of Andriy Melnyk and his wife Sofia arrived in Kyiv, a line 100 meters (over 300 feet) long formed outside the city's main Greek Catholic cathedral. Residents came to pay their respects to a man who had been buried in Luxembourg for more than six decades. On May 25, the couple was laid to rest with full honors at the National Military Memorial Cemetery -- the first repatriation in what Ukraine is building toward a Pantheon of Prominent Ukrainians.

The project, announced by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on April 22, aims to return the remains of Ukrainian historical figures from abroad and enshrine them in a dedicated memorial to be built in the capital. Melnyk, a colonel in the Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR) army and leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) from 1938 to 1964, died in Cologne and spent his final 18 years in Luxembourg.

"This is primarily about bringing historical figures back to Ukraine -- those who are of fundamental importance for shaping Ukrainian national consciousness and for our state-building," Zelenskyy wrote on Facebook in April.

Graves scattered across the world

Ukrainian diplomatic missions have identified burial sites of 98 prominent Ukrainians in 21 countries. The list spans political, military, cultural and civic leaders of the UPR, West Ukrainian People's Republic, OUN–Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the government in exile and national liberation movements.

Ukraine considers the UPA a patriotic organization. But the group's legacy is contested: Poland accuses the UPA of killing 100,000 Poles from 1943 to 1945, and the two countries have been in dispute over its role for decades. The tension sharpened recently when Zelenskyy named a military unit after the UPA. Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk called the move "worrying."

Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz called on Ukraine to "reconsider this decision," saying "for the Polish people, the UPA is above all the symbol of crimes committed against defenseless civilians." A senior Ukrainian source pushed back, warning against "politicization" of the dispute.

"It's our army... and our honorific titles. We don't comment on how Poland names its units or the people it chooses to honor within its borders," the Kyiv source told AFP in June, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"Our position is that history should remain with the historians, that respect belongs to the military, and that the memory of all the victims must be preserved."

Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said the reburials are central to restoring national heritage.

"This is not an easy task, as they are scattered across the world -- in both friendly and unfriendly countries," he said. Budanov met Poland's deputy foreign minister in June to discuss the UPA dispute, and was set to meet Poland's defense minister and representatives of Poland's president Karol Nawrocki.

Parliament member Ihor Huz told Kontur the country is decades behind on this project.

"We are 35 years overdue to create a Pantheon of Prominent Ukrainians. But what's important is that this process is in motion, and I hope it won't be stopped," he said, adding that a historically significant site in Kyiv should be chosen with security in mind.

Not all repatriations will be straightforward. Activist Anna Ruda of the Euromaidan-Warsaw initiative told Kontur that some figures will be nearly impossible to recover.

"There are heroes it will be hard to repatriate. For example, I can't imagine that in the foreseeable future we'd be able to repatriate from Russia the remains of the hetmans Petro Doroshenko and Petro Kalnyshevsky, the academic Sergei Korolev or the writer Oleksandr Dolzhenko," she said. Moscow, she argued, would not accept an exchange for figures buried in Ukraine.

No more lease problems

The pantheon also addresses a practical problem: the vulnerability of Ukrainian graves abroad to expiration of burial leases or neglect.

Bohdan Chervak, head of the OUN, noted that Luxembourg authorities extended the lease on Melnyk's plot in 2023 for 30 years, thanks to diaspora efforts, but called that "really the exception, not the rule." The burial plot of Yevhen Konovalets, the founder and first head of the OUN and a commander of the Sich Riflemen, faces major lease complications in Rotterdam. The pantheon, Chervak told Argument in May, will be "the only place where there won't be any lease issues."

Historian Oleksandr Alferov, head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, pointed to a 2017 case in Prague where the remains of writer Oleksandr Oles and his wife were forcibly exhumed from the Olšany Cemetery due to an unpaid lease.

"We almost lost Oleksandr Oles," he wrote on Facebook. Many graves of Ukrainian activists abroad remain "under threat," he added. On May 25, Ukraine received authorization from Rotterdam authorities to transfer Konovalets' remains to Kyiv.

During a March meeting at the Office of the President of Ukraine, historian Yurii Yuzych suggested prioritizing sites that lack care from local communities or diplomatic missions, given that European laws can allow graves to be liquidated.

Complex cases and shared heroes

Some repatriations raise delicate questions. At the Orthodox Cemetery in Warsaw's Wola district, around 100 graves hold fighters from the UPR who battled for Ukrainian independence between 1917 and 1921 and fought alongside the Poles against Bolshevik Russia. Among the most prominent is Gen. Marko Bezruchko, who held off Semyon Budyonny's army, five times larger, near Zamość in 1920, helping save Warsaw in what history records as the "Miracle on the Vistula."

Jerzy Rejt, an activist for the Ukrainian minority in Poland and former chairman of the Union of Ukrainians in Poland, told Kontur that Polish soldiers still pay tribute at those graves on their own Armed Forces Day each August 15. Whether a figure like Bezruchko, honored by both nations, should be moved to Kyiv is an open question.

Journalist Vitaly Portnikov noted that some central figures of Ukrainian history will remain where they are. Poet Taras Shevchenko, he said, will stay at Chernecha Hora.

"There are people who are buried in Ukraine. They're buried where they were born, where they wanted to be buried and where their relatives are buried. Taking them to Kyiv would be strange," Portnikov said in a May interview with Espreso.

Negotiations are underway over the remains of Symon Petliura, general secretary of military affairs of the UPR, who was shot in Paris 100 years ago and is buried at Montmartre Cemetery, and hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi, who died in 1945 and was buried in a family crypt in Bavaria.

Parliament member and historian Volodymyr Viatrovych framed the effort in terms of state responsibility.

"I think the readiness to rebury and [readiness] to take responsibility, that these people will be buried in Ukraine, is indicative of the fact that this state is worthy of the memory of these heroes," he said on Facebook. The pantheon, he added, will ultimately hold "a few dozen people."