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Ethnic Belarusians, Belarusian-born people accounted for at least one-fourth of Polish army officers executed by NKVD in 1940, historian says

Ethnic Belarusians and Belarusian-born people accounted for at least a fourth of the nearly 22,000 Polish army officers executed by the Soviet Union's NKVD in April and May 1940, historian Ihar Kuznyatsow told BelaPAN.

The researcher, who visited the Katyn execution site in Russia's Smolensk province on August 23 to mark European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism, said that a total of 21,857 Polish citizens had been executed by the NKVD in 1940.

Most were massacred in Katyn and elsewhere in Russia but some were executed in Ukraine and Belarus.

Of the 4,421 officers killed in Katyn, 1,221 were either ethnic Belarusians or Belarusian-born people, Mr. Kuznyatsow said, adding that the proportion could be extrapolated to the total number of the victims.

Russia and Ukraine have already released the lists of Polish army officers executed on their territories, while the names of some 3,870 Poles imprisoned and later executed in Belarus have not been made public, Mr. Kuznyatsow stressed.

The historian said that they had likely been executed and buried at a few sites near Minsk.