At the ceremony of honoring memory of victims of political repressions, President Petro Poroshenko emphasized that the authorities did everything to secure Ukrainians from negative phenomena of totalitarian regime and repetition of tragedies.
“Hybrid war always starts with an ideological attack. Gross military power is usually preceded by the so-called soft power. They kill souls before targeting bodies. We should complete decommunization, for it is the issue of Ukrainian national security, our responsibility for the future and moral obligation to millions of Ukrainians eliminated by the Bolshevism,” the Head of State noted in the Bykivnia Graves National Historic Memorial.
The President noted that the Bykivnia Graves were the largest burial of victims of the Stalinist regime in Ukraine. The exact number of casualties hasn’t been figured out yet. The Ukrainian Institute of National Memory calls numbers from 15 to over 100 thousand people. NKVD officials executed thousands of Polish officers in Bykivnia as well. It was another evidence of allied relations between Stalin and Hitler at the beginning of the Second World War.
The attendees honored memory of the victims of communist repressions with a moment of silence.