Ukrainians Reject Russia’s Distortion of 80th Anniversary of World War II

Executive Summary:

• The Kremlin has shifted May 9 Victory Day celebrations from honoring the sacrifices of Soviet troops in World War II to a tool for justifying Russia’s war against Ukraine.
• Moscow’s attempts to monopolize “victory” over the Nazis ring hollow in Ukraine, whose own people fought and died in the war, and whose postwar history was marked not by liberation but by renewed Soviet oppression.
• Even 80 years after the end of World War II, the preservation of freedom remains a defining struggle for Ukraine.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, the deadliest military conflict in history, which claimed 70–85 million lives. While most countries vow to “never again” allow the horrors of World War II to repeat, the slogan, “We can do it again!” (Можем повторить!, Mozhem povtorit!) remains the unofficial phrase to celebrate Victory Day. The slogan, which references defeat over Nazi Germany in Berlin, has grown in popularity since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea (Russian Seven, March 25).

Victory Day, on May 9, is central to Russian identity, representing a mix of Soviet nostalgia, reactionary Orthodoxy, and imperialism. Only since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rise to power has Victory Day become a national spectacle, with the number of actual veterans of World War II dwindling. Prior to this, grand military parades commemorating World War II in Moscow were held only in 1945, 1965, 1985, and 1995. Between 1945 and 1965, May 9 was not even a public holiday in Russia. The Kremlin has used Victory Day to showcase its military power and cast itself as the sole vanquisher of fascism. This weaponization serves to link past triumphs in World War II to present-day aggression in Ukraine (IWM Transit Online, accessed May 1).

Moscow’s projection of Russia as the hero of World War II omits several uncomfortable historical facts and routinely employs the euphemism “Great Patriotic War” to narrow focus exclusively to the post-1941 period. The war began not with Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union, but with the Nazi invasion of western Poland on September 1, 1939, which the Soviets agreed to allow under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. This non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union featured a secret agreement to divide Eastern Europe between the two countries, granting the Baltic states and eastern Poland to the Soviet Union, which the Soviets invaded on September 17, 1939, just 16 days after the Nazi invasion of western Poland (100 Key Documents, August 23, 1939).

The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union primarily affected territories that are now sovereign countries—Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Moldova—all of which were completely occupied, except for some eastern and southern regions of Ukraine. In contrast, between 3.6 and 7 percent of the territory of modern-day Russia was occupied by German forces (United States Military Academy West Point, [1] [2] [3], accessed May 6). Non-Russian nationalities inside Russia, as well as the non-Russian republics of the Soviet Union, have historically borne high costs of war and conflicts on behalf of Moscow (see EDM, February 2, 2023, April 4, 9, 16 30, 2024, February 4). [1] During World War II, Belarus lost approximately a third of its population (Ministry of Justice of Belarus, accessed May 5). In Ukraine, about six million civilians died, and more than 2.5 million Ukrainian soldiers were killed fighting at the front (Embassy of Ukraine in Egypt, May 8, 2018). In addition to making up a quarter of the Red Army, Ukrainians fought in other Allied forces, including the U.S. and Canadian armies, with 40,000 Ukrainians in the latter, as well as the French Resistance. Thousands of Ukrainians served in the Polish Army under General Władysław Anders, making up two percent of the Polish Tadeusz Kościuszko Division and 70 percent of the Czechoslovak Brigade led by General Ludvík Svoboda (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, May 8, 2014).

Moscow consistently downplays or ignores the role of the Western Allies, particularly the United States, in the Nazi defeat. Through the Lend-Lease Act, the United States supplied the Soviet Union with critical military aid, including over 400,000 trucks, 18,000 airplanes, 13,000 tanks, and vast amounts of food, fuel, and raw materials. Without this support, the Soviet war effort would have struggled to sustain itself, especially from 1942 to 1943 (Babel.ua, June 11, 2021). In a recent attempt to normalize relations with the United States, Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary of the Russian President, acknowledged that the United States allocated more than $11 billion ($200 billion in today’s terms), which Russia paid back only in 2006 (YouTube/@Aztvinternational; TASS, April 30, 2025). Russia repaid only a fraction of its debt in the amount of $674 million in 2006, 60 years after the war ended (Babel, June 11, 2021).

Today, Victory Day in Russia is a politicized spectacle that glorifies militarism and demands support for Russia’s war against Ukraine as a requirement for loyalty to Russia (Center for European Policy Analysis, May 25, 2023). The Kremlin’s use of Victory Day to frame its invasion of Ukraine as a continuation of the fight against “fascism” is central to this distortion (President of Russia, February 24, 2022).

The Kremlin’s presentation of Ukraine as a neo-Nazi regime emerged after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 (President of Russia, March 18, 2014; Kuzio, “Crimea: Where Russia’s War Started and Where Ukraine Will Win,” July 8, 2024). Ukraine, once a participant in shared post-Soviet commemorations of the end of World War II, firmly rejects Russia’s narrative (Ukrainska Pravda, May 5, 2005). In 2023, Ukraine moved its official Day of Remembrance to May 8 to align it with European commemorations of the end of World War II (Ukrainska Pravda, May 8, 2023; The New Voice of Ukraine, May 8, 2024). Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy emphasized that Ukraine honors the memory of the war’s victims rather than glorifying militarism (President of Ukraine, May 8, 2023). Ukraine’s decision to pivot away from Russia’s Victory Day reflects a broader decision to identify with a European future rather than Russia’s Soviet-imperial past (Center for European Policy Analysis, May 1, 2023).

The Kremlin’s manipulation of history for contemporary political aims raises concerns over both internal propaganda and its foreign policy. By casting its military aggression as a continuation of its anti-fascist legacy, Moscow attracts sympathetic audiences abroad, particularly among far-right and far-left groups willing to accept the Kremlin’s framing of its war against Ukraine as a fight against Western domination (Global Network on Extremism and Technology, April 14, 2022; West European Politics, May 3, 2024)

This year marks another anniversary, with the Kremlin preparing to host around 20 world leaders and high-ranking officials from various countries—a stark contrast to the isolation Russia faced in 2022 following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has been warned that attending the Moscow parade could jeopardize Serbia’s European Union membership bid (Izvestiya, April 19). Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has accepted the invitation, but both European leaders may ultimately refrain from attending under mounting pressure. Their decisions carry significant weight, serving as a critical challenge to Western efforts to prevent the legitimization of Moscow’s aggressive policies. Russian media claim that Xi Jinping, the President of the People’s Republic of China, may attend (TASS, May 4). Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, however, has stated he will not travel to Moscow, and former U.S. President Donald Trump will also not attend the parade (TASS, April 17; European Pravda, April 21).

For Kyiv, the memory of World War II is inseparable from the experience of Soviet domination, forced collectivization, the Holodomor genocide, a mass famine in Ukraine under the Soviet Union induced by Joseph Stalin’s regime, and decades of repression (Holodomor Museum, accessed May 5). In much of Eastern Europe, Soviet-era monuments are being removed, and shared commemorations such as Victory Day are being replaced with national remembrance days for the victims of totalitarian regimes (European Parliament, July 25, 2022; The Moscow Times, August 19, 2022; Orda.kz, May 23, 2023). The Kremlin’s attempts to monopolize the narrative of “victory” ring hollow in Ukraine, whose own people fought and died in the war, and whose postwar history was marked not by liberation but by renewed Soviet oppression. As of May 8, 2025, Ukrainians mark 1,169 days of resistance against the Russian Federation in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. As the 80th anniversary of World War II approaches, the preservation of freedom remains a defining struggle for Ukraine.

 Note:

[1] These calculations subtract the areas of present-day Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia that were either entirely or largely occupied by the Nazi forces from the area corresponding to modern-day Russia.