Every year, on the third Sunday of May, Ukraine celebrates the day of remembrance of the victims of political repression organized by the totalitarian Stalinist regime. President Volodymyr Zelensky paid tribute to repressed Ukrainians in the Bykovnyansky forest.
This is reported by Ukrayinska Pravda.
"The totalitarian system used barbaric methods of reprisal, destroying thousands of Destinies and turning thousands of people into camp dust. The notorious symbol of these crimes is the Bykovnyansky Forest on the outskirts of Kyiv. During 1937-1941, it was a secret burial place for victims of political repression who were tortured and shot by the NKVD in Kyiv prisons."
According to historians, up to 100 thousand people who were destroyed by the Soviet government are buried in the Bykovnyansky forest.
On Sunday, a basket of flowers from the president of Ukraine was installed at the memorial sign at the entrance to the National Historical and Memorial Reserve "Bykovnyansky graves". Flowers were also laid at the mass grave and a memorial sign of Polish graves on the territory of the Reserve.
Bykovnyansky burial of victims of Stalinist terror is the largest in Ukraine. During 1937-1941, Gaz-AA trucks, which were popularly called "One and a half trucks", almost every night brought the bodies of those shot in Kyiv NKVD prisons for secret burial in the Bykovnyansky forest.
Bykovnya, which went from the territory of death to the place of memory, is recorded in the minds of Ukrainians as a direct consequence of the Great Terror, the result of crimes committed by the communist regime.