WW II Victory Day in Kyiv--May 9

May 9 was a Monday and we were able to go to downtown Kyiv with our friends.  We had been told that this was a national holiday to remember the war and that we would see many war veterans.  In the Metro where we were meeting at 1p we saw several decorated men and they were glad to have us take pictures of them.  This man in the white suit spoke to us and told us he had been awarded the highest award of the USSR, the red star pinned to his left lapel (I have no idea what for).  The orange and black striped ribbon was worn by many on the day as a remembrance.

I found the following information excerpted from various articles at  www.infoukes.com 

 [An Information Resource about Ukraine and Ukrainians] :

World War II ended in Europe on V-E Day (Victory in Europe) May 8, 1945 after 2,076 days of war. The USSR celebrated the end of the war, which it called the "Great Patriotic War," one day later on May 9th. Ukraine was the greatest victim of World War II, suffering the greatest material damage and the greatest human losses of any country in the war. How is it possible that Ukraine was even more devastated than Germany? One reason was that Ukraine suffered twice from a "scorched earth" policy conducted by the two greatest totalitarian powers of this century, first Stalin's Soviet Russia and then by Hitler's Nazi Germany.

An American foreign correpondent, Edgar Snow, who visited Ukraine in 1943 and at the end of the war in 1945, was so astonished at the enormous losses it had suffered that he wrote an article for Saturday Evening Post titled "Ukraine Pays the Bill." It could be said that "The Allies won the war but Ukraine paid the bill."

Every Ukrainian family suffered losses in the war and many had victims of both Hitler and Stalin. Perhaps it is significant that out of three of my relatives who were victims of the war, two were shot by Stalin's USSR and one was shot by Hitler's Gestapo. Ukraine has thousands of World War II monuments. Very small villages often have a monument listing the names of the World War II dead. Ukrainian losses probably numbered 10 million or half of the entire USSR total and twenty per cent of the entire World War II total of fifty million dead. (from article by Andrew Gregorovich)

Another source identified 459 Ukrainian villages that had been destroyed with all or part of the villagers killed or deported.  Another 27 villages were "annihilated"


Hitler occupied Ukraine totally, and the well-manicured fields and villages of Ukraine were repeatedly a battleground. Both Stalin and Hitler wanted to erase Ukrainians, both burnedout Ukraine upon retreat, leaving uncounted numbers to die from starvation and exposure in the winter.


As I searched the website of the president of Ukraine I found various pictures of the official parade and ceremonies of the morning and our little man in the white suit was there at Pres. Yanukovych's side as they walked down the street at the head of the parade.

He sat at the president's right while reviewing the parade at Independence Square

and during the following program where the president gave a speech!

We arrived after the programs were over to find the Independence Square still full of people and musical numbers still going on the stage

  After walking around the streets we wanted to go to the WWII war memorial.  This had been the site of a visit by the president earlier in the day.

JD and I had been there before, but it became obvious that most people were going there to lay flowers in remembrance.  In spite of the crowds, we went and were glad.

The flowers at the front of the memorial were stacked up as you can see.  Also visible is the white hat of one of the honor guards posted on both sides of the memorial

Flat Stanley Explores Grocery Stores

We love to go shopping. Here we showed Flat Stanley the frozen foods.

You can buy frozen vegetables and mushrooms 

and frozen fruits---so many different kinds of berries!

These are frozen "pelmeni" and "vareniki" which are like ravioli or dough filled with meat, cheese, or fruits.  Upper left are stuffed green peppers; to the right are stuffed cabbage rolls.  There are cases with these kinds of products prepackaged but these bulk items are more interesting to see and cheaper.  

Ukrainians like fish and here are many varieties in the frozen foods section.

The dairy section is also filled with many new things.  Here Stanley is among the liter bottles of milk, looking at the liter packages of milk.  Milk comes in many percentages of milk fat and is always "ultra-pasterized" so it has a very long shelf life--six weeks.  We buy lots of these green-checked packages of milk at 1.5%

Here are cream, sour cream, and fresh spreadable cheese with different milk fat percentages.

Yogurt also comes in bottles and packages of liquid as well as the small containers we're used to

Many varieties of cheese can be bought prepackaged or cut/sliced to your liking

The deli section is full of many different cold and hot foods to try!

Flat Stanley is hanging around in the varieties of smoked salami sausage.  And here are more kinds of smoked meats that can be bought by the piece or slices.

Smoked and fresh fish is sold here

And if you want it even fresher, every store has at least one tank of live fish for sale to kill and eat!  That means the salesman nets the fish you want and you take it home and clean it!

  

People eat many kinds and parts of meat that we don't normally think would be good

Flat Stanley Travels

People have cars of all kinds here in Kyiv, as the highway that goes by the temple shows.

But most people use public transportation and buses are very common.  This 56D is the bus line we use.

Subways (the Metro) run underground through the center of Kyiv.  

Sometimes on the outskirts of the city the Metro runs above ground like here at the station in Lisova.

Here the Metro becomes a subway again as it heads into the hills above the Dneiper river.

Here is a Metro station entrance marked by the green M.

You go down the stairs into the Metro station, pay your admission, and then go further down into the ground on escalators.  Sometimes it is a very long way.  Here we are coming back up.

When you get to the platform you need to make sure you get on the train going the right direction!  However, if you make a mistake, you just get off at the next station and cross over to the train going the other way! 

Sometimes it is very empty, like this early Sunday morning when the missionaries are traveling.

Sometimes it is more crowded and you have to stand and hang on!

Another place you might have to hang on is in a tram (tramvaui), a street car that runs on tracks, usually down the middle of the road.  It is electric, powered by the overhead power lines.

This is a new fancy tram with ads for the world soccer tournament that will be held in Kyiv in 2012.

Trollybuses are also electric and run off electric wires overhead, but can drive normally as long as the street has the wiring.  

To go to places outside the city, you may take a bus or a 15-20 passenger van.  Here is one going to Chernigov.  Many of these vans are parked outside Metro stations where people will need transportation to an outlying area.  They have signs indicating their destinations in their windows.  The driver waits until all seats are filled with passengers before taking your money and leaving.  Here some of the passengers are waiting outside smoking their last cigarette.

 We waited inside in the front seats.  This picture, taken through the front window, shows the line of "marshrutkas" (translates as ferries) waiting to take people to cities/villages outside Kyiv.

We went to the main train station in Kyiv, which is Ukraine's capital city, so it is the hub of national and international train traffic.  Here is the older train station and the new one nearby.

Trains can also run on electrical overhead lines or not.  Overnight trains have some "sleeping cars" with compartments where passengers can lie down.  You must make reservations and pay more.

My favorite part of our visit to the train station was stopping for a treat here!