Polish and Ukrainian PMs remember Bykivnia massacre
PR dla Zagranicy
Roberto Galea
18.09.2015 09:43
Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz met her Ukrainian counterpart Arseniy Yatsenyuk on Thursday to mark the anniversary of the Stalinist mass murder of Poles at the Bykivnia site.
Polish PM Kopacz (R) and her Ukrainian counterpart (L) Yatsenyuk lay wreaths at the site of the Bykivnia graves. Photo: PAP/Radek Pietruszka
“Poles and Ukrainians have paid a terrible price for totalitarianism,” the Polish PM said at a joint press conference in Bykivnia, on the outskirts of Kiev.
The two politicians marked the 76th anniversary of the Soviet invasion into Poland on September 17 1939, when Stalin's troops seized easten Polish provinces in collusion with the Nazis.
“In a civilised world there is no place for imperialism,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, said.
“On 17 September, 1939 the Soviet Union completed an alliance with Hitler and attacked the Republic [of Poland], which was then heroically defending itself against the Germans,” Kopacz said.
As a result of this aggression “huge numbers of Polish citizens came under Soviet dominion, which was the execution of Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact,” the head of Polish government said.
The Bykivnia mass graves are estimated to contain the bodies of up to 120,000 Polish POWs killed in 1940 by the notorious NKVD, the notorious Soviet-era secret police. The Bykivnia site was only revealed after the collapse of the USSR, and now symbolizes Soviet era atrocities committed against Poles alongside Katyn Forest, another site of Stalinist executions of Polish POWs in 1940. (rg/rk)
Source: PAP, Kyiv Post
Bykivnia