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. The NKVD prisons in Belarus and Ukraine held people arrested as 'enemies of the people' (these included. They were imprisoned in prisons in Lviv, Rivne, Lutsk, Drohobych, Stanislawow and Ternopil, as well as in Brest-on-the-Bug, Vilnius, Pinsk and Baranovichi. With the release of NKVD documents on the Katyn Massacre in 1992, in addition to confirming the fate of the POWs from the camps at Kozelsk, Ostashkov and Starobilsk, the fact that 7305 prisoners incarcerated in the above-mentioned prisons had also been murdered was declassified. The personal details of almost half of them became known thanks to a document handed over by the Ukrainian side in 1994, containing a list of 3435 prison personal files of the murdered, which became known as the so-called 'Ukrainian Katyn list'. These prisoners were murdered in the Kyiv, Kharkiv and Kherson prisons; most of the victims' bodies were hidden in Bykovnia near Kyiv.

Families of the murdered in Poland and around the world, affiliated in associations focused primarily on the Federation of Katyn Families and 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 of the Polish War Cemetery in Kyiv-Bykivnia in 2010-2012 and its ceremonial opening and consecration on 11.09.2012.

. At the Polish War Cemetery in Kyiv-Bykivnia there is one mass grave covered with granite slabs. On a low foundation, located along the avenue surrounding the cemetery area, 3435 individual epitaph plates were placed, symbolically commemorating all the persons listed on the so-called 'Ukrainian Katyn List'. The necropolis included the following elements made of light granite: an altar with a cross and an altar wall on which the names of the victims were engraved, a memorial bell, obelisks with the state 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.

In Kyiv-Bykivnia, in addition to commemorating the victims of the Katyn Massacre, there is also a Ukrainian memorial dedicated to Soviet citizens - victims of political repression (including many Poles).

The National Historic Memorial Reserve "Bykivnia Graves", of which the Polish War Cemetery is a part, is looked after by the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine. In 2015. The OPWiM Council carried out conservation of the architectural elements of the Polish cemetery. In 2017, unknown perpetrators devastated the Polish and Ukrainian parts of the necropolis by placing offensive inscriptions on the monuments. The restoration of the cemetery to a dignified appearance was financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.

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