On May 8 the international community commemorates Victory in Europe Day or V-E Day, marking the official signing in Berlin of Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender to the Allies, and remembers all those who have fallen in defending liberty and democracy during World War II, including millions of Ukrainians.
Russia commemorates this day on May 9 when Soviet authorities announced victory over Nazi Germany. Under Putin, this has become an annual military parade to showcase Russia’s military hardware.
May 9 was smeared right from its inception in 1945, as Soviet authorities never stopped brutally oppressing with impunity the people in the Soviet Union and its so‑called satellite states.
Since the beginning of its full-blown military invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Russia has smeared a deep layer of blood by committing genocide against the Ukrainian people. This fact has been recognized by United States President Joe Biden on April 12, 2022 and by a unanimous Motion of the House of Commons of Canada on April 27, 2022.
In fact, Sovietism, Nazism and today’s Rashism have one horrific thing in common – they are each fully responsible for the perpetration of the worst crime against humanity – genocide – namely the Holodomor, the Holocaust, and today’s ongoing genocide in Ukraine.
As a result, Putin has joined the despicable company of the world’s most destructive imperialist and authoritarian rulers, namely Stalin and Hitler.
On the UN web site one can read that:
“The Genocide Convention was the first human rights treaty adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 9 December 1948 and signified the international community’s commitment to ‘never again’ after the atrocities committed during the Second World War.”
Despite this laudable “never again” commitment, genocide against the Ukrainian people is being committed, once again, in 2022 – 90 years after the Holodomor – and the international community must help to stop it now.
This year, on May 9, Russia was planning to announce that its “special military operation” in Ukraine was successful, and that Russia had taken full control of the whole of Ukraine and replaced its governing authorities with a pro-Kremlin puppet government.
When this initial plan failed miserably due to Ukraine’s formidable and heroic resistance, Russia changed its imperialist plans and was set to announce instead that it had “liberated” the whole of the Donbas region. That did not happen either.
Whatever narrative Russia decides to follow in order to justify its depravity, the world must not be blinded by Russia’s warped logic to spill even more Ukrainian blood onto Russia’s national canvas of carnage.
This article is republished from site of the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) “Ukraine-2050”, a non-profit organization established to help implement, within one generation – by 2050 – strategies for the sustainable development of Ukraine as a fully independent, territorially integral, democratic, reformed and economically competitive European state.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and not necessarily the views of the Kyiv Post.
