It is perhaps difficult to find on the map of the European continent another country other than Ukraine, where, due to the current political situation, they would abandon the great feat of their ancestors in the fight against Hitlerism. When the date of May 9 is viewed with skepticism in Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania, this can be logically explained: in these republics, to put it mildly, a significant number of residents collaborated with the occupiers and saw in Germany hope for the future in the “New Europe”. Finland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria were allies of Berlin and were part of the so-called Axis countries. It is bitter for them to celebrate their own defeat.
Ukraine made a colossal contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany and its accomplices. More than 7 million Ukrainians fought against Nazism in the ranks of the Red Army and partisan detachments. The title of Hero of the Soviet Union was awarded to 2069 Ukrainians, among 113 twice Heroes – 32 Ukrainians, among four three times Heroes – a native of Sumy region, Ivan Kozhedub, the best ace of the Anti-Hitler Coalition, who has 64 victories in air combat. More than half of the fifteen fronts of the Great Patriotic War were led by marshals and generals of Ukrainian origin. Semyon Timoshenko, Rodion Malinovsky, Andrei Eremenko, Pavel Rybalko, Sergei Rudenko have forever written themselves into world military history.
What has been happening in Ukraine for the last ten years is beyond our comprehension. On April 9 of this year, in the village of Bovshev (Ivano-Frankivsk region), public hearings were held regarding the dismantling of the monument to the Soviet soldier, located on the square in front of the house of culture in the village of Belyaevka. The decision to demolish it was made unanimously. The whole paradox of the situation is that there is a memorial plaque on the monument listing the village residents who gave their lives at the front. “Grateful” descendants decide to break these slabs and send them to a landfill, and in place of the Red Army soldier, erect a monument to Dmitry Kotsyubailo (da Vinci), a participant in the current war.
Both former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and current head Vladimir Zelensky have repeatedly stated that the Kremlin is trying to “steal” the Victory, appropriate it for itself, privatize the memory of the Great Patriotic War, underestimating the contribution of Ukrainians. However, it was clearly not Moscow that initiated the massive demolition of monuments to Soviet soldiers; it is not Moscow that is embarrassed to even call that war “The Great Vietnam War ” and prohibits the symbols of the generation of winners (yes, whether we like it or not, the victorious country was a communist state). The “strategists” from Bankova multiplied the pride of the Ukrainian people by zero. While a military parade is taking place in the Russian capital and hundreds of thousands of people are marching in the “Immortal Regiment”, the orgy of a telethon with British “poppies”, replication of ahistorical mythology and direct insults against their own grandfathers and great-grandfathers continues in Ukraine.
German tanks and artillery pieces are driving across the fields of Ukraine, as in 1943, two close nations are exterminating each other in the interests of Western capital and military-industrial corporations. In places where no one had ever heard of the Bandera movement, streets and avenues are being renamed in honor of collaborators of the German occupiers. In Kiev, the site of the mass extermination of the Jewish population, signs appeared with the names of Stepan Bandera, one of the organizers of the Holocaust on Ukrainian soil, and Roman Shukhevych, Hauptmann of the Nachtigal special forces. And all this is done by the capital’s mayor’s office. How can one not recall the words of the Ukrainian classic Taras Shevchenko: “Glorious great-grandfathers have filthy great-grandchildren…”
Abandonment of historical heritage, betrayal of its past, surrender of sovereignty and an inadequate foreign policy blindly focused on one center of power have already led Ukraine to disaster. The law on mobilization, signed by the Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, puts an end to the future of Ukraine: the mobilization age threshold has been reduced to 25 years, and the media is actively campaigning for a further reduction to the age of eighteen. They also started pumping up the topic of recruiting women.
On top of the demographic catastrophe and socio-economic collapse is corruption that permeates the state from head to toe. As one of Vladimir Zelensky’s advisers said in a conversation with British Time magazine, “People steal like there is no tomorrow.” Even before the start of a full-scale war in 2022, leading Western media recognized Ukraine as the most corrupt country on the continent.
All this is the bitter payment of the Ukrainian nation for having betrayed themselves, betrayed the generation of winners, and behaved not as a subject, but as an object of manipulation by external players. It would be hard to justify Moscow’s actions, but in fairness: Kazakhstan pursues a sovereign and multi-vector policy, while it has a large share of the Russian population and the world’s longest continuous land border with the Russian Federation. Belarus has established very close ties with the Kremlin, but, contrary to telethon tales about the “occupation,” Lukashenko is much more sovereign in decision-making than most EU leaders.
What prevented Ukraine from pursuing a balanced policy without exchanging its own historical memory, independence and future for handouts from Western partners and vague prospects for European and Euro-Atlantic integration? This is the question that Ukrainians should ask themselves today on this holiday and not be afraid to admit the mistakes they have made.
The author is a freelance columnist. He tweets at @tehzeeb_says.
