During the Volhynian Genocide , the town was a shelter for ethnic Poles , escaping the genocide . In that period , Ukrainian nationalists murdered app . 3,700 Polish inhabitants of Kovel county . In early spring of 1944 , the 27th Infantry Division of the Home Army operated in the area . Kovel was captured by the Red Army in July 1944 . In 1945 , the Big Three , Great Britain , the United States and the Soviet Union , established new borders for Poland ; the Polish population was forcibly resettled and Kovel was incorporated into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic . It has been a part of sovereign Ukraine since 1991
Volhynian Genocide
Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia
Kovel