Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has honored the memory of the victims of mass executions of Ukrainian intellectuals in the Sandarmokh forest massif.

"Today we sadly recall the victims of mass executions of intellectuals in the Sandarmokh forest massif, which has become a symbol of the Great Terror. Eighty-one years ago, in Russia's Karelia, Stalin's executioners shot over a thousand prisoners of the Solovki camps, among them more than 300 Ukrainians," the head of state wrote on his page Facebook on Saturday.

Poroshenko recalled the dead representatives of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, in particular, Les Kurbas, Mykola Kulish, Mykola Zerov, Marko Vorony, Valerian Pidmohylny, Serhiy Hrushevsky, Volodymyr Chekhovsky, Anton Krushelnytsky, Ostap Krushelnytsky, Bohdan Krushelnytsky, Pavlo Filipovych, Oleksa Vlyzko, Valerian Polischuk, Hryhoriy Epik, Oleksa Slisarenko, Mykhailo Yalovy, and others.

In 1937, the Siberian forest massif Sandarmokh saw the large-scale execution of representatives of the Ukrainian intelligentsia and officers of the UNR army.

The mass burial ground at Sandarmokh was discovered only in 1997.