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