President Viktor Yanukovych took part in a ceremony of remembering the Holodomor victims in Ukraine, held at the National Museum Memorial to the Victims of Holodomor in Ukraine in Kyiv.
For the first time in the history of independent Ukraine, all the former presidents of Ukraine - Leonid Kravchuk, Leonid Kuchma, and Victor Yushchenko - have gathered to remember the victims of Holodomor as well.
Other participants of the event were Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, Head of the Kyiv City State Administration, Oleksandr Popov, members of the government, diplomats and the public.
President Yanukovych placed a symbolic pot with grain on the sculpture "Bitter Childhood Memories" and lit up a "candle of remembrance."
The participants paid tribute to the Holodomor victims by observing a minute of silence.
“Each year, in the end of November, we honor the memory of the victims of the terrible Holodomor famines which took the lives of millions of people. The unprecedented tragedy of the global scale inflicted irreparable losses on Ukraine. The terrible years of totalitarianism were also a spiritual tragedy: a great number of churches were ruined, hundreds of thousands of peasants, workers and intelligentsia were physically destroyed and sent to camps. Nearly every Ukrainian family suffered a loss. The Ukrainian state sacredly keeps the memory of the tragic pages of our history and confidently advances forward, developing the civil society on the basis of the protection of the rights and freedoms and laying strong foundation for the generations to come,” reads the presidential address.
President Viktor Yanukovych also took part in a ceremony of remembrance of the victims of totalitarian regimes, held in the National Historical Memorial Preserve Bykivnya Graves.
The president placed a candle and laid flowers at the Memorial Cross.
Those present paid tribute to the political prisoners, who were tortured, killed, and buried in the Bykivnya forest by the totalitarian regime, by observing a minute of silence.
President Viktor Yanukovych also took part in a ceremony of opening the foundation stone of the Memorial to the Victims of 1936-1941 Repressions to be erected in the National Historical Memorial Preserve Bykivnya Graves.
"The memorial will be a symbol of remembrance for those, who suffered severe tortures and injustice, and gave their lives for our future," the president said.
He also stressed the Memorial would also become "a symbol of warning against such tragedies ever repeating in the Ukrainian land."
According to Viktor Yanukovych, today, on the day of remembrance of the victims of Holodomor in Ukraine, we also pay tribute to the victims of the totalitarian regime. "We lost a whole stratum of scientists, artists, spiritual leaders, managers, engineers ... But our people have survived and revived. We managed to turn over the tragic pages of our history and found the strength to go on," he said.
"The people reached their primordial goal: an independent and united country,” said Viktor Yanukovych.