LVIV/KYIV. Jan 11 (Interfax) - Unknown vandals have partly destroyed a monument to Poles who lived in the Huta Peniatska village in the Lviv region and were killed during the Second World War, the communications department of the National Police regional branch told Interfax.
"An operative investigative police group is working at the scene, the leadership of the main directorate has headed there," head of the communications department of the main police department in the Lviv region Svitlana Dobrovolska said.
According to preliminary data, a memorial cross was pulled down; tombs with the names of residents who perished were painted in the colors of the Ukrainian national flag and the red-black flag. The Nazi Waffen SS symbols were put on a tomb.
It is still unclear when exactly the act of vandalism was perpetrated, investigative actions are underway, witnesses are being searched for because the monument was located several kilometers away from the nearest populated locality, Dobrovolska said.
In turn, the head of the Lviv regional state administration Oleh Syniutka said at a meeting with Polish Consul General in the city Wieslaw Mazur that he considered the damage to the monument to the Huta Peniatska residents a provocation. "I think that it is a provocation [...] someone intentionally wants to stir up the people," director of the Lviv regional state administration's internal policy and information department Olha Bereziuk quoted the regional administration head on Facebook.
Syniutka assured the Polish consul general that the law enforcement agencies will make the utmost effort to uncover the crime.
The Huta Peniatska village, where Poles lived, was destroyed in February 1944. Historians have different theories regarding those events. Ukrainian historians maintain that Nazi troops eliminated the village, while Polish historians contend that a unit of the Galicia Waffen SS division was also involved in the elimination of the village.
The Ukrainian national memory institute has issued a statement condemning the act of vandalism in the Lviv region on Tuesday. "The destruction of the monument in Huta Peniatska is a provocation, which seeks to aggravate the Polish-Ukrainian relationship and is profitable to a third party," the institute said in the statement.
"Huta Peniatska is a Polish village, which was destroyed on the order of the German invaders due to provocations committed by a unit of Soviet partisans stationed here. The Nazis deliberately involved police units composed of Ukrainians in the punitive operation," the institute said.
"The desecration of the graves and monuments on both sides of the border ought to be equally resolutely denounced in both countries by the authorities and the civil society," the Ukrainian national memory institute's head Volodymyr Viatrovych said.
The institute said that they would ask law enforcement agencies to investigate the crime and hold those guilty to liability.