Ukrainians shun Soviet victory

ANNIVERSARY: WORLD WAR II PRIDE TURNS TO ANGER

‘Today Russians are killing us. Shared history no longer means anything.’

The solemn rhetoric and formal gatherings in Ukraine marking the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany on 9 May every year always had deep personal resonance for 62-yearold Volodymyr Kostiuk.

His father was a soldier in the Moscow’s Red Army, fought in Europe during World War II and was held captive in a Nazi prisoner of war camp.

But this year, his pride has turned to indignation and anger, with the anniversary blackened by Russia’s full-scale invasion of his country.

“We were fighting together against the Nazis. It was our joint victory. Today, the Russians are killing and torturing us. This shared history no longer means anything,” said Kostiuk, after fleeing from his home as Russian troops poured into Ukraine.

“Did we win then for them to annihilate us now?”

The Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany has traditionally been a holiday of national pride in the countries of the former Soviet Union which, with up to 27 million people killed, suffered the highest toll of any nation in World War II.

Since Russian President Vladimir Putin came to power, the holiday has taken on increasingly militaristic overtones, with a bombastic military parade through Moscow’s Red Square in showing off its latest military hardware.

But this year, to shore up Western support and distance the country from Soviet-era rituals, Ukraine is drawing parallels between the horrors brought on Europe by the Nazis and Russia’s invasion.

“Decades after World War II, darkness has returned to Ukraine. Evil has returned – in a different uniform, under different slogans, but for the same purpose,” Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an address on Sunday.

He compared bombings of European cities in World War II to Russian shelling on Ukraine this year and said Russia, like Nazi Germany, was attempting to “give this evil a sacred purpose”.

The Ukrainian Institute of National Memory summarised the trend in blunter terms, proposing a new slogan for remembrance day.

“We defeated the Nazis – we will defeat the russhisty,” it put forward, using a play on words in Ukrainian that combines the words Russian and fascist. –