Ukraine approves compensation for descendants of Polish-deported Ukrainians
Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (Ukrainian Parliament) (photo: Getty Images)
The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (Ukrainian Parliament) has passed draft law No. 2038 on compensation for Ukrainians who were forcibly relocated between 1944 and 1951 from territories that belonged to the Polish People's Republic (now modern-day Poland). Compensation may also be provided to descendants of those deported, according to the Judicial and Legal Gazette.
Draft law No. 2038, titled On Amendments to the Law on the Restoration of Rights of Persons Deported on the Basis of Nationality, was first submitted for consideration in 2019. According to the authors of the bill, at least 700,000 people may be eligible for compensation.
Importantly, the compensation will be paid from the Ukrainian state budget. There is no provision for compensation from modern-day Poland.
Who is eligible for compensation
The adopted law officially recognizes that the deportation decisions made by the authorities of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), its constituent Soviet republics, and the Polish People's Republic were unlawful and criminal acts. Accordingly, restoring the rights of Ukrainian citizens who were among the deported is declared a state priority.
Compensation payments may be granted to individuals or their heirs who were forcibly relocated between 1944 and 1951 from areas of compact Ukrainian settlement in Poland.
Those affected by the deportations will be granted the official status of deported persons. In addition to this status, such individuals (or their descendants) will receive a range of rights, including the right to reclaim property and homes taken during the deportation.
How the compensation will be provided
Applications must be submitted no later than three years from the moment an individual is granted the status of a deported person. The compensation for lost property will be paid in stages over a five-year period. In case of the individual's death, compensation will be transferred to their heirs.
Deported persons will also be entitled to a one-time financial payment, issued after obtaining official status. The size and procedure for all compensation measures will be determined by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.
Operation Vistula and other deportations
After World War II, historic Ukrainian regions such as Lemkivshchyna, Nadsiannia, Kholmshchyna, and Pidliashshia were transferred from the Soviet Union to Poland. Although official deportations began in September 1944, the forced resettlement intensified significantly later.
Starting in 1947, Poland and the USSR carried out a series of deportation campaigns, including the infamous Operation Vistula. These deportations were finalized by the 1951 agreement On the Exchange of Sections of State Territories.
As a result of these operations, ethnic Poles were removed from areas of Western Ukraine and Belarus and handed over to Polish authorities, while the Soviet Union took in Ukrainians and Belarusians forcibly displaced from their homes by the Polish communist regime.
Years later, following the collapse of the USSR, Poland's Constitutional Tribunal in 2002 and the European Court of Human Rights in 2004 both ruled that the 1944 Soviet-Polish agreement On the Evacuation of the Ukrainian Population from Poland and Polish Citizens from the Ukrainian USSR lacked legal grounds. The actions of the USSR and the Polish People's Republic related to this so-called evacuation were declared illegal.
On July 16, 2025, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine officially recognized the forced relocation of Ukrainians from their permanent places of residence in Poland between 1944 and 1951 — including during Operation Vistula — as an act of deportation.
