[15] Encountering resistance, the UPA commander in Volhynia, Dmytro Klyachkivsky ("Klym Savur"), issued an order in June 1943 for the "general physical liquidation of the entire Polish population".

[22] In March 1944, the UPA command, headed by Roman Shuchevych, issued an order to drive Poles out of Eastern Galicia, first with warnings and then by raiding villages, murdering men, and burning buildings.

For example in 1930 terror campaign and civil unrest in the Galician countryside resulted in Polish police exacting a policy of collective responsibility on local Ukrainians in an effort to "pacify" the region.

Such view was shared by the local Home Army command, but the Polish authorities in Warsaw and London took a more moderate stance, discussing the possibility of limited Ukrainian autonomy.

Volhynian Poles were dispersed across rural areas, Soviet deportations stripped them of their community leaders, and they had neither own local partisan army nor state power (with exception of the German occupants) to turn to for protection.

[90] The OUN-B and UPA leadership chose Holy Week (18–26 April) as the period for an organised attack on the Polish population, which was to include the western counties of Równo and Krzemieniec, where Petro Oilynyk [uk] "Eney" was in command.

[94] The assaults spread throughout the eastern Volhynia, and in some localities Poles managed to organise self-defence units that were able to repel attacks by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, but in most cases the UPA slaughtered and burned Polish villages.

It was determined to fight the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), not believing there was any possibility of an agreement, but at the same time it was obliged to carry out the plan of an anti-German general uprising, which ordered it to spare its forces until the Soviet-German front arrived.

[95] On the opposite side was the local Government Delegate, Kazimierz Banach [pl] "Jan Linowski", who still believed in the plan agreed with headquarters and Home Army commander General Rowecki to reach an agreement with the Ukrainians, which he had been trying to implement since 1942.

[117] In January 1944, at the same time as the UPA was carrying out its last wave of massacres of the Polish population, the units of the Home Army in Volhynia embarked on the implementation of Operation Tempest, i.e. an anti-German uprising.

"[129] Kamiński claimed that in Koropiec, where no Poles were actually murdered, a local Greek Catholic priest, in reference to mixed Polish-Ukrainian families, proclaimed from the pulpit: "Mother, you're suckling an enemy – strangle it.

[131] Roman Shukhevych, a UPA commander, stated in his order from 25 February 1944: "In view of the success of the Soviet forces it is necessary to speed up the liquidation of the Poles, they must be totally wiped out, their villages burned... only the Polish population must be destroyed".

[155] Timothy Snyder describes the murders: "Ukrainian partisans burned homes, shot or forced back inside those who tried to flee, and used sickles and pitchforks to kill those they captured outside.

Then, at dawn, a village was surrounded by armed members of the UPA, behind whom were peasants with axes, knives, hatchets, hammers, pitchforks, shovels, sickles, scythes, hoes and various other farming tools.

Ukrainians in ethnically mixed settlements were offered material incentives to convince them to assist in the attacks on their Polish neighbors or warned by the UPA's security service (Sluzhba Bezbeky) to leave by night, and all remaining inhabitants were murdered at dawn.

[163] Timothy Snyder estimates that in July 1943, the UPA actions resulted in the deaths of at least 40,000 Polish civilians in Volhynia (in March 1944, another 10,000 were killed in Galicia),[164] causing additional 200,000 Poles to flee west before September 1944 and 800,000 afterward.

[165] Kazimierz Bąbiński, commander of the Union for Armed Struggle-Home Army Wołyń in his order to AK partisan units stated:[166] I forbid the use of the methods utilized by the Ukrainian butchers.

Ten days later, the Home Army declared itself in support of an independent Ukrainian state that would encompass non-Polish inhabited areas, and made an appeal to end the civilian bloodshed.

Special German units formed from the collaborationist Ukrainian and later the Polish auxiliary police were deployed in pacification actions in Volhynia, and some of their crimes were attributed to the Home Army or to the UPA.

On 25 May 1943, the commander of the Soviet partisan forces of the Rivne area stressed in his report to the headquarters that Ukrainian nationalists did not shoot the Poles but cut them dead with knives and axes, with no consideration for age or gender.

[citation needed] The Institute of National Remembrance estimates that 100,000 Poles were killed by the Ukrainian nationalists (40,000–60,000 victims in Volhynia, 30,000–40,000 in Eastern Galicia and at least 4,000 in Lesser Poland, including up to 2,000 in the Chełm region).

In March 1943, the OUN(B) (specifically Mykola Lebed[192]) imposed a collective death sentence of all Poles living in the former east of the Second Polish Republic, and a few months later, local units of the UPA were instructed to complete the operation soon.

The "hatchet men", to their shame, butcher and hang defenceless women and children.... By such work Ukrainians not only do a favor for the SD [German security service], but also present themselves in the eyes of the world as barbarians.

We must take into account that England will surely win this war, and it will treat these "hatchet men" and lynchers and incendiaries as agents in the service of Hitlerite cannibalism, not as honest fighters for their freedom, not as state-builders.

[201] In 1944–1945, the UPA and Home Army initiated a ceasefire and orders to cease any actions against civilians, and with mediation of Orthodox and Roman Catholic clergy a meeting was arranged between commanders of both formations.

[204][205] On 11 July 2003, Presidents Aleksander Kwaśniewski and Leonid Kuchma attended a ceremony held in the Volhynian village of Pavlivka (previously known as Poryck),[206] where they unveiled a monument to the reconciliation.

[213][clarification needed] In May 2023, Ukraine's Rada chairman Ruslan Stefanchuk spoke in front of the Polish Sejm, where he expressed sympathy to the victims of the massacre, their families and descendants and called for reconciliation.

[217] Polish Sejm adopted a resolution commemorating the victims, blaming OUN and UPA, praising rescue offered to the Poles by some Ukrainian individuals, calling for reconciliation recognizing guilt of the perpetrators and highlighting the need for exhumations.

[222] The Polish Institute of National Remembrance investigated the crimes committed by the UPA against the Poles in Volhynia, Galicia and prewar Lublin Voivodeship and collected over 10,000 pages of documents and protocols.

[214] Ukrainian historian Yuri Shapoval openly speaks about the "Volhynia Slaughter" and calls for increased recognition of the massacre inside Ukraine, pointing out very complex ethnic composition of these territories, mutual historical resentments and incitement by external parties, Soviets, Germans and Polish government on exile.