Unidentified vandals have defiled a memorial dedicated to the memory of the victims of mass political repressions executed by Soviet NKVD employees in Bykivnia, a suburb of Kyiv, head of the Ukrainian National Memory Institute Volodymyr Viatrovych said.

"The Ukrainian and Polish memorials to the NKVD victims were desecrated in Bykivnia near Kyiv. The vandals, who most likely did this at night, left traces resembling those in Huta Peniatska," he wrote on his Facebook page.

The photographs which Viatrovych has made public show the words 'SS Galicia' had been left in red paint on the Polish part of the memorial and the name of the OUN-UPA on the Ukrainian one.

The Polish Embassy to Ukraine has filed a note with the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry with the demand to determine the circumstances of the incident in Bykivnia, Polish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Joanna Wajda said on her Twitter page.

"The Polish Embassy to Ukraine has filed a note with the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, in which we are calling for the ascertaining of the circumstances and the uncovering of those who vandalized the Polish war cemetery in Bykivnia," Wajda wrote.

The Bykivnia Graves national historical and memorial reserve is situated in the Bykivnia populated locality. In 1937-1941 the Bykivnia forest was a secret burial place of the victims of mass political repressions who were executed by NKVD employees at Kyiv prisons. According to Ukrainian historians, 30,000-35,000 executed residents of Kyiv and its region, as well as over 3,500 foreign citizens, are buried in Bykivnia.

As reported, it became known on January 10 that unidentified vandals in the Lviv region partially damaged a monument to the Polish residents of the village of Huta Peniatska killed during the Second World War.