Kiev- “There is no ceasefire or a truce on (Victory Day), and Putin’s celebration and military parade will not pass in front of his guests calmly and proudly as he wants.” Thus, the Ukrainian position appeared on an initiative announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, and victory over Nazi Germany.
Putin, who has vowed to a overwhelming response if she did not abide, saw her refusal as evidence of “contempt of history and common sacrifices”, and renewed the accusation of her authorities of “Nazi”, who was the most prominent pretext of his comprehensive war on Ukraine, since February 2022.
It appears as if the dispute between the two sides has a position on a “national occasion” has a value and historical position, but it is in fact much greater than that.
After decades of standing and celebrating side by side, the distances between Kiev and Moscow diverged, and the break became the title of their relationships and all occasions, before they started an unprecedented military war between them, put aside the “Slavic race” brother, eternal friendships, and joint history for 70 years in the era of the Soviet Union.
ID installation
The matter began with great differences caused by the “orange revolution” at the end of 2004, which called for “the revival of identity and the correction of history”, then the conflict was crowded in 2014, with Russia’s occupation of the Crimea and supporting a separatist movement in several provinces, before it launched a wide war on Ukraine.
Thus, differences developed to include cutting diplomatic relations, banning communist and loyal parties of Russia, as well as demolishing statues, abolishing occasions and removing symbols and names indicating the common past, with the rewriting of history, which has become the Soviet Union “an occupied dictatorial system”, as well as Russia after it.
The “Victory Day” is only one of the many examples in a past that Ukraine canceled and instead adopted the so -called “memory and reconciliation” day, and it defined the date of the eighth instead of the ninth of May, to disagree with the Russians, and Europe shares its traditions on the anniversary of the end of the war.
She even changed the symbol of the occasion, and replaced the “championship” planned black and orange, which was decorated with roads and squares, and the celebrities and old warriors put them on their chests, with the flower of “Numan Shiites”, Al -Ramza to the blood of soldiers and civilian dead.
Of course, the Russian authorities consider that its current Ukrainian counterpart, which was preceded by the “betrayal” of brotherhood and history, while the Ukrainians seem to be completely different.
The absence of facts
“The policies and works of the Russians are the first and most important factors that prompted the Ukrainians to question the past, and to search for the truth that was absent from them to remain in the circle of dependency,” the writer and historian, Olexander Bali, told Al -Jazeera Net.
Bali, who is the author of the contemporary history book of Ukraine, added, “If we take” the day of victory, “for example, we find that Moscow has set it on the ninth of May to disagree with the West, and it appears with its huge huge celebrations that it is the great maker of victory, which we know very well that it would not have been achieved had it not been for the support of the allies, and the great sacrifices made by all the countries of the Soviet Union, especially Ukraine.”
Regarding the sacrifices, Bali says that what matters to them as more Ukrainians, that the Soviets, and the Russians after them, denied these sacrifices so that they would not appear in the position of the “city of debtor” Kiev, Mingsk and others. He added: “Out of 20 million Soviet fighters, there are 7.5 million Ukrainian soldiers who fought Nazi Germany, almost half of them were killed.”
He continued, “Also, 8 million Ukrainian civilians were killed, out of 27 million residents of the Union countries. Thus, the country topped the list of sacrifices alongside Belarus, these are facts that were absent.”
In the same context, Valerie Picar, lecturer at the University of Kiev Mohala, says: “Russia wants to humiliate Ukraine, and deliberately overlook the size of the Ukrainians’ contribution to the victory process.”
Picar believes that the traditional Soviet novel, presented by Stalin in 1945 and is still active today in the shadow of Putin, depicting the “Russian peoples” as victorious, and that all other peoples were secondary, and it was possible to dispense with them, including the Ukrainians, Tatars of Crimea and others, who “accused some of betraying the homeland and cooperating with the Nazis.”
War paradoxes
Away from the debate of historical attitudes and facts, there are remarkable paradoxes today in light of the war, which people see, and most politicians and experts invoke them whenever they talk about the occasion of “victory”.
In different parts of the capital, Kiev, German mechanisms of World War II are not displayed, but rather protruding Russian mechanisms, symbolizing the ability to confront the Russians and believe in “victory over them.”
Expert Picar tells Al -Jazeera Net that one of the “greatest paradoxes” is that Russia commemorates victory and peace in conjunction with its ignition of the largest war in Europe since 1945, and that its victim of Ukraine “sister”, the second largest and most important country of the former Soviet Union after Russia, and accusing it for this purpose of “the inheritance of Nazism”, puts it in one trench with “Germany Hitler”.
As for the writer and historian, Bali, he believes that during the Second World War, the Ukrainians were forced to “fight the bad alongside the bad, or fight them together with limited capabilities,” as did the National Liberation Movement led by Stepan Bandira, who was not spared from both sides, “so he got through the Nazi detention centers as an enemy, and considered a traitor in Moscow.”
It indicates that the war and years that preceded it greatly affected the Ukrainian view of Russia, turning it from a friendly and sister neighbor to “the biggest threat and enemy.”
Most of them also prompted questioning and reconsidering all historical events and crimes, which “made the pages of the Soviet era black in their history, and the union in it is an occupation, and Moscow inherited the tendency of domination and domination,” he said.
