Ukraine has condemned Kremlin support for the country's separatists and urged the world not to appease Moscow, as events to mark the end of the second World War highlighted Kiev's break with Russia and pivot to the West.
For the first time, Ukraine joined western Europe in commemorating the end of fighting yesterday, May 8th, in place of the Soviet-era Victory Day holiday that Russia and several other former Soviet states will celebrate today.
Ukraine also now officially uses the term “second World War” in place of the Soviet and Russian term “Great Patriotic War” and has adopted the poppy as a remembrance symbol in place of the orange-and-black St George’s ribbon, which is an emblem of Russian patriotism adopted by the separatists.
Partially occupied regions
“You couldn’t imagine in your nightmares that, after 70 years of peace, war would start again in Ukraine,” President
Petro Poroshenko
told a special parliamentary session attended by the
United Nations
secretary general,
Ban
Ki-moon.
Comparing events in Ukraine to the lead-up to the second World War, Mr Poroshenko said his country understood “what the occupation of the Sudetenland is, for we have two partially occupied regions – Donetsk and Luhansk. One shouldn’t remind us what the Anschluss of Austria is, for we have learned it from the annexation of Crimea.”
Calling on the world to take a tough stand against Russia, which has fomented separatism in eastern Ukraine and supplies its militia with arms, Mr Poroshenko recalled the “fatal miscalculations” of Europe’s 1930s leaders.
The 1939-1945 war could have been avoided, he said, “if people hadn’t buried their heads in the sand; if they hadn’t expected that each new portion of human blood would finally satiate the predator-aggressor; if they hadn’t consoled themselves with illusions that the disaster would not affect them”.
Russia, which will hold a massive parade of military hardware in Moscow today, denies supplying separatist fighters in a conflict that has killed more than 6,100 people and rumbles on despite an official ceasefire.
A much smaller parade is expected to take place in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, the separatists' stronghold, where militant leader Alexander Zakharchenko yesterday claimed his forces were fighting "fascism", just like their forefathers in the 1940s.
“Now, like 70 years ago, the enemy again came to our land. Fascism raised its head, and occupiers again wanted to destroy us,” he told veterans.
“Your sons and grandsons repeated your feat . . . showing heroism and bravery by winning new victories against an old enemy . . . We won’t let them force us to our knees or destroy our motherland.”
Visiting Paris, US secretary of state John Kerry said his country and Europe "stand firm with the people of Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression".
