Ukrainian lawmakers’ decision to officially mark Victory Day on May 8 instead of May 9 is a slap in the face to millions of Ukrainians whose forefathers fought against the Nazis, former Prime Minister Nikolay Azarov has said.
"The Rada parliament has officially canceled the celebration of Victory Day on May 9, replacing the holiday with the pan-European Day of Remembrance on May 8. It’s easy to guess that this is not just a perfunctory transfer of a date, with the new holiday, in line with decommunization, to be devoid of any mention of the contribution of the Red Army in the defeat of Nazism in which the people of Ukraine also played a major role," Azarov wrote in a social media post.
Stressing that it would be impossible to discuss the contribution of the Western allies and Soviet Ukrainians in the anti-Hitler coalition by singling out the latter from the rest of the Red Army, Azarov expressed concern that after the passage of the new law, celebrations dedicated to the Great Patriotic War on May 9 may ultimately be banned entirely, just "as they were in Latvia under the pretext of a ban on the glorification of totalitarianism."
"In this way, the current Ukrainian authorities are officially renouncing the greatest victories of their people. This is undoubtedly a mistake, and the emasculated holiday on May 8 won't revoke the memory of millions of Ukrainian families about the great feat of their forefathers," Azarov wrote.
Ukraine's authorities have slowly and methodically whitewashed the memory of victory in the Great Patriotic War – the term used in post-Soviet countries to refer to the Eastern Front of World War II, since the 2014 coup. (Across the post-Soviet space, Victory Day is held on May 9 because the German instrument of surrender signed in Berlin late in the evening on May 8, 1945 coincided with the early morning hours of May 9 in Moscow.)
In 2015, President Volodymyr Zelensky's predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, created a new holiday on May 8 known as "Remembrance and Reconciliation Day." The holiday led to attempts to "reinterpret" Ukraine's wartime history, and to "reconcile" the millions of Ukrainians who fought alongside Russians, Belarusians, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Armenians, Azeris, Jews, and dozens of other Soviet nationalities in the Red Army with fascist militias who collaborated with the Nazis and engaged in war crimes against Poles, Russians, Jews, and other Ukrainians.
Over six million Ukrainians fought in the ranks of the Red Army during World War II, compared to just 100,000-400,000 or so fighters of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) fascist militias. Yet in post-Soviet Ukraine, the latter have enjoyed an outsized influence in the public space, starting with the reinterpretation of history textbooks in their favor, and the creation of monuments to fascist leaders including Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych. This blatant Nazi resurgence, ignored by the West, culminated in the formation of gangs of organized nationalist thugs who helped overthrow the Yanukovych government in 2014, serving as the "muscle" in street protests.
These forces have played an active role in fighting against Donbass militias and the Russian military, and had outsized influence in the formation of official government policy, including by carrying out repressions against political dissidents, and keeping watch over authorities to prevent a softening of Kiev’s anti-Russian positions.