Poland claims Second World War grave has been destroyed by Belarus

Poland’s government has alleged that authorities in Belarus were levelling a memorial site containing the graves of Polish soldiers who died during the Second World War.

The allegation came a day after the Polish government said it was demolishing a monument to Soviet Red Army soldiers in Poland, one of dozens marked for destruction since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine six months ago.

Lukasz Jasina, the spokesman for Poland’s Foreign Ministry, said on Twitter that a cemetery in Surkonty, Belarus, where members of Poland’s largest wartime resistance force battled Soviet army troops, was being “devastated by the services of the Minsk regime”.

“Those who think that the human memory of heroes can be eradicated are very mistaken. The regime will pay for these acts of barbarism,” Mr Jasina wrote.

There was no immediate comment from Belarus, and it was not clear if the developments were related. Belarus has destroyed other Polish memorial sites in the past.

Poland, like many of its neighbours, was invaded and occupied by Germany and the Soviet Union during the Second World War and then spent decades under Moscow-backed rule.

Before Russia invaded Ukraine, there was an effort to remove hated communist symbols from public spaces in Poland.

However, cemeteries with the graves of Red Army soldiers are not disturbed in Poland.

The cemetery in Belarus is the final resting place of soldiers with Poland’s Home Army, a resistance force that also fought the occupying German forces throughout the war.

The Home Army was under the command of a Polish government-in-exile that was based in London during the country’s occupation by Nazi and Soviet forces.