Ukrainian people paid incredibly high price for liberation from Nazism – Poroshenko
President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has expressed confidence on the Day of Sorrow and Commemoration of the War Victims that the Ukrainian people will overcome all the trials and build a powerful, democratic, European Ukraine.
"Some 77 years ago today the bloody period of the World War II began. And tens of millions of people died in the brutal confrontation between the former allies - the Stalinist and Hitlerite totalitarian regimes. The Ukrainian people paid an incredibly high price for liberation from Nazism and the approaching victory of the anti-Hitler coalition. The bitter truth does not haunt us," Poroshenko said in his address to the Ukrainian people in connection with the Day of Sorrow and Commemoration of the War Victims, published on the website of the Ukrainian president on Friday.
According to him, almost every Ukrainian family lost relatives and friends in hostilities, under enemy occupation, in concentration camps, from famine and Stalinist repression. "The eternal memory of all the dead," the president of Ukraine said.
He also expressed gratitude to "all the compatriots of the older generation, who liberated the country from the enemy, who stood and tempered in the flames of World War II, to all the heroes who are now defending the Ukrainian state with weapons in their hands."
"I believe that together we will adequately overcome all the trials on the chosen path and build a powerful, democratic, European Ukrainian state," Poroshenko said.