On May 17, Ukraine honors the memory of the victims of the totalitarian ideology in the USSR.

Bowing our heads in sorrow, we remember the millions of peasants deliberately starved to death by the Holodomors, Ukrainian patriots, the national elite, writers, artists, scientists, priests, just innocent people brutally murdered in the times of the Great Terror, we remember those who were thrown into Gulag prisons and camps, deported and sent into exile.

The whole truth about the crimes of the Soviet regime was revealed to us with a few decades of delay after Ukraine had gained its independence. We have finally begun to realize the scale of the crime committed against our nation, all the horror and depth of the tragedy that befell it. However, there is still a long way to go until not only Ukrainians but also the international community realizes the whole truth about those crimes.

Unfortunately, this is not just about the past. Russian aggression against Ukraine has again brought political repression to our land.

For the recent sixth year, human rights of the Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar national communities have been massively violated in Crimea. Murders, kidnappings of activists, fabricated trials, illegal detentions, unjustified arrests, searches, intimidation. Currently, more than a hundred Ukrainian citizens are detained for political reasons in Russia and the occupied Crimea, most of them Crimean Tatars.

The situation in the occupied areas of Donbas is even worse. Executions and killings of Ukrainian prisoners of war and local patriots, kidnappings, torture and humiliation have become commonplace here.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine appeals to the international community, the entire democratic world to pay special attention to the mass and systemic repressions taking place in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories for the past sixth year and to take all measures to put an end to these terrible crimes.