On the Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repressions, Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Olena Kovalska and Minister of Culture and Strategic Communications Mykola Tochytskyi visited the National Historical and Memorial Preserve "Bykivnia Graves" to honor the memory of the fallen.
“Bykivnia is not just a cemetery. It is a giant nameless memorial. This is where those who were inconvenient for the totalitarian Soviet regime were taken and buried,” said Olena Kovalska.
She emphasized that with its aggression against Ukraine, modern-day Russia is continuing the policies of the USSR.
“We are fighting to stop these killings and to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again. So that our children can live in freedom – to think, speak, and breathe freely,” the Deputy Head of the President’s Office stated.
It was in the Bykivnia Forest near Kyiv, between 1937 and 1941, that victims executed in Kyiv prisons by the NKVD were secretly buried. It remains the largest mass burial site in Ukraine of victims of political repression.