Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday described the upcoming Victory Day parade in the Russian capital, Moscow, on May 9 as a “parade of cynicism.”
“Tomorrow, the atrocities of the Nazis will be brought up by the organizer of mass graves in Bucha. And those who orchestrated the blockade of Mariupol will be the ones talking about the siege of Leningrad. It will be a parade of cynicism.”
“There is just no other way to describe it. A parade of bile and lies,” he said.
“As if it were not dozens of allied states, but (Russian President Vladimir) Putin personally who defeated Nazism. As if it were he who raised the Victory Banner over the Reichstag in Berlin with his own hands,” Zelenskyy said in a video address on the occasion of Ukraine’s Day of Remembrance and Victory over Nazism in World War II.
Zelenskyy said that his country is fighting for peace and understands what is needed to achieve it, arguing: “Either Russia must radically change, or the world will have to change.”
The Ukrainian president further argued that what took place 80 years ago made clear to all that “evil cannot be appeased,” but rather it must be fought with force “wherever it is possible.”
Zelenskyy’s remarks came hours after a three-day unilateral ceasefire in Ukraine announced by Putin last month came into effect as of midnight, and is scheduled to remain in place until midnight on May 11.
The halt was declared as an annual military parade will take place in Moscow’s Red Square on May 9 with the participation of foreign leaders in commemoration of the 80th anniversary of Victory Day.
Victory Day is celebrated on May 9 in Russia and other countries, including some former Soviet states, to commemorate the Soviet Union’s victory against Nazi Germany during World War II—a conflict Russia calls the Great Patriotic War.