KIEV, September 29. /ITAR-TASS/. Ukraine will prevent racial discrimination and fascism, President Petro Poroshenko said on Monday during a wreath-laying ceremony at the monument to victims of World War Two's Babiy Yar massacre, desecrated days before by unidentified vandals daubing Nazi symbols on the granite memorial.

“Ukraine and the whole world have received a strong vaccine against fascism, extermination of people and killings of innocent victims. Our country has never permitted racial discrimination, revival of fascism, ethnic reprisals, a split in languages, creeds or any other indicator,” Poroshenko noted, adding that "Ukraine is united and will stay united.”

“Only a united Ukraine can combat the risks and threats the country faces,” the president said at the candle-lit edifice.

Poroshenko, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Parliament Speaker Oleksandr Turchynov laid flowers during the ceremony on a day when diplomats and Kiev residents gathered from early morning to pay their respects.

On this day 73 years ago, Nazi invaders embarked on mass executions of civilians and Soviet prisoners-of-war in Babiy Yar, a north-western district of Ukraine’s capital, Kiev. From September 29, 1941, to 1943 between 70,000 and 200,000 Jews were killed in this part of the city.