President Zelenskyy’s address on Remembrance and Reconciliation Day

This was reported by the President's press service.

"On May 8, Ukraine and the free world remember six terrible years in the history of mankind. From 1939 to 1945... The years that took the lives of millions of people, including 8 million Ukrainians. The years of occupation and atrocities, bloody battles and bombings, blockades and mass executions, the Holocaust. All the evil that Nazism brought to the world, brought to our land," the President noted.

He added that different peoples in unity, in alliance as part of the anti-Hitler coalition, resisted evil. 

"It is on May 8 that most nations of the world remember the greatness of the victory over the Nazis. The world admires all those who were protecting and protected life. Who threw down the Nazi flags on the liberated territory and who opened the gates of the concentration camps. Who restored freedom to the nations, who destroyed and condemned Nazi evil," Zelenskyy said.

The President also added that on May 8, 1945, the act of unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht came into force, and on May 8, the world honors the memory of all those whose lives were taken by that war.

"It is pure history, without ideological admixtures. And it is the history of our people, our allies, the entire free world. Today, we are returning it to our state," he said.

• On the Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation on May 8, 2023, the Ukrainian Embassy in Berlin (Germany) will for the first time refuse to lay flowers at Soviet monuments or Soviet symbols.