Russia’s impunity for past crimes allowed for further atrocities in Ukraine – FM Kuleba

The relevant statement was made by Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba on the social media platform X, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

Eighty-six years ago, from October 27 to November 4, the Soviet authorities massacred over 1,000 pele in the Sandarmokh forest. Among them, there were prominent Ukrainian writers and poets, artists, scientists, dramatists, and other luminaries.

In Ukraine, they are known as the Executed Renaissance, namely poet Myka Zerov, the founder of the Berezil Theater Les Kurbas, educators Antin, Ostap, and Bogdan Krushelnytskyi, writers Valerian Pidmohylnyi, Myka Kulish, Pavlo Filipovych, Geo Shkurup, Myroslav Irchan, eksa Vlyzko, Valeryan Pischuk, Hryhorii Epik, Marko Voronyi, eksa Slisarenko, Mykhailo Yalovyi, historians Matv Yavorskii, Serhii Hrushevskyi, and many others.

In 1937-1938. about 6,000 pele, representing 60 different ethnic groups, were killed there.

The Soviet Union had been hiding this crime for five decades, until its clapse. Only in 1997, after lengthy searches, a group of Russian historians discovered the massacre site.

Now, the above group. Memorial, is being pressed and labeled a ‘foreign agent’ by Putin’s dictatorship. Sandarmokh’s leading researcher, historian Yuri Dmitriev, was arrested twice in 2016 and 2018, and was sentenced to 13 years in jail in 2020.

Kuleba emphasized that the aforementioned crimes had never been prerly prosecuted or punished. And it is precisely this total impunity that has enabled the Russian evil to commit horrible atrocities in Bucha, Izyum, Mariup, and elsewhere.

“Ukraine must win this war and bring evil to justice, no matter how long it takes, to ensure Ukrainians’ right to live in peace and safety in their homeland,” Kuleba concluded.