As a result of the decision of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (b) of 5 March 1940, in the spring of 1940 the NKVD murdered around 22,000 Polish citizens: prisoners of war taken prisoner after the USSR's aggression against the eastern territories of the Second Polish Republic in September 1939; they were imprisoned in three special NKVD camps (Kozelsk, Ostashkov and Starobelsk) and prisons in so-called Western Belarus and so-called Western Ukraine. Detained in Ostashkov were officers of the State Police, the Police of the Silesian Voivodeship, the Border Guard, the Prison Guard, the Border Protection Corps, intelligence and counterintelligence officers, gendarmes and military settlers. The prisoners of war from Ostashkov were murdered at the NKVD regional headquarters in Kalinin (current name: Tver), and their bodies were hidden in the so-called death pits in Mednoye.

Families of the victims of the Katyn Massacre in Poland and all over the world, associated in associations focused mainly in the Federation of Katyn Families and in the All-Poland Association "Police Family 1939", strived for a dignified commemoration of the victims of the Katyn Massacre. Representatives of the Katyn circles cooperated with the Council for the Protection of Remembrance of Struggle and Martyrdom, the institution responsible on behalf of the Polish state for the commemoration of the murdered, which led to the construction in 1999-2000 of Polish War Cemeteries in Katyn, Mednoye and Kharkiv, and in 2012. - Polish War Cemetery in Kyiv-Bykivnia. The ceremonial opening and consecration of the cemetery in Mednoye took place on 2.09.2000.

. In the cemetery covering an area of 1.7 ha, 25 mass graves have been arranged in the place of the original death pits. They have been marked with slabs and a tall cross has been erected on each of them. There are 6296 individual epitaph plates along an avenue around the graves. Next to the altar is a plaque with the inscription: In tribute/ to the more than 6,300 resting in Mednoye/ officers of the State Police/ and the Police of the Silesian Voivodship/ of the Border Guard and the Prison Guard/ soldiers and officers/ of the military police/ of the Border Protection Corps/ and other military formations/ employees of the state administration/ and the judiciary/ of the Second Republic/ prisoners of war from the camp in Ostashkov/ murdered by the NKVD in the spring of 1940/ in Kalinin/ the Polish Nation. The necropolis included the following elements made of cast iron: an altar with a cross and an altar wall on which the names of the victims are engraved, a memorial bell, obelisks with the national emblem, the Virtuti Militari Cross and the Cross of the September Campaign. Signs of the four religions professed by the citizens of the Second Republic of Poland (the Latin cross, the Orthodox cross, the Star of David and the Muslim crescent) are placed in the cemetery. The Polish character of the cemeteries is emphasised by bas-reliefs depicting Polish military eagles placed at the entrance and trilingual information boards installed in 2010. Each of those buried has an individual epitaph plaque containing: military rank or service rank, name and surname, date and place of birth, occupation, service assignment, year of death.

The Polish War Cemetery at Mednoye is part of the Russian Memorial Complex. A separate section there commemorates Soviet citizens of various nationalities (including Poles) who were murdered by the USSR authorities between 1933 and 1938. The Russian Memorial Complex is under the care of the State Central Museum of Contemporary Russian History. The Council of the OPWiM carried out repair and conservation work at Mednoye in 2010.

For more information on the discovery of the mass graves and the construction of the cemetery, see https://katyn.miejscapamieci.gov.pl .