Zelensky on Victory Day, evils of war: Never again? Tell Ukraine about it

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the nation, and the world, on Victory in Europe Day, observed on May 8.

He noted that the world observes this day as when the Allied forces defeated the Nazis. Zelensky continued that after World War II, there were “millions of reasons to say to evil: never again!”. However, since February 24, the day Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine, the word “never” has been erased for the country. 

Zelensky stated, “This year we say ‘Never again’ differently. We hear ‘Never again’ differently. It sounds painful, cruel. Without an exclamation, but with a question mark. You say: never again? Tell Ukraine about it.” 

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The president pointed out that while Nazi occupation in cities like Mariupol had claimed the lives of 10,000 civilians in two years, Russia had killed 20,000 in two months. 

Zelensky continued, “Decades after World War II, darkness returned to Ukraine. And it became black and white again. Again! Evil has returned. Again! In a different uniform, under different slogans, but for the same purpose. A bloody reconstruction of Nazism was organized in Ukraine. A fanatical repetition of this regime. Its ideas, actions, words and symbols. Maniacal detailed reproduction of its atrocities and “alibi”, which allegedly give an evil sacred purpose.” 

Comparing the damage and destruction in Ukraine to what European nations faced during World War II, Zelensky pointed out how Poland must remember “Nazi-destroyed Warsaw”, and how a similar situation is playing out in Mariupol. 

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He brought back memories of Germans playing ‘Moonlight Sonata’ while bombing Coventry in England, drawing parallels to Kharkiv. Zelensky also reminded the French about “Oradour-sur-Glane, where the SS burned half a thousand women and children alive” and “thousands of people at a resistance rally in occupied Lille”. 

The Ukrainian president then pointed out to Russian forces’ actions in Bucha, Irpin, Borodyanka, Volnovakha and Trostyanets, and also the resilience, shown by the war-torn nation in places like Kherson, Melitopol, and Berdyansk. 

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Zelensky concluded that all Holocaust survivors remember “how one nation can hate another”. 

The Ukrainian president said to his countrypeople “no evil can avoid responsibility”, adding “our military and all our people are descendants of those who overcame Nazism. So they will win again.”