9 May was a blustery day in Kyiv – hot in the sun, bitingly cold in the shade. A day of sharp contrasts: ‘The kind of weather that makes my joints ache,’ joked Igor Nikolayevich, a local Second World War veteran who turned up in Park Vechnoi Slavy (Park of Eternal Glory) for celebrations commemorating the capitulation of Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union.
In post-revolutionary Ukraine, where de-communisation laws were recently passed by parliament, and where a bloody conflict with Russia-backed separatists continues to simmer in the East, many feared that the 9 May celebrations would be tense.
The 9 May holiday – the traditional date when VE Day is marked in the former Soviet Union – was not, contrary to some people’s expectations, cancelled. A new date, 8 May, was instead introduced as the Day of Remembrance, alongside a new remembrance symbol, the poppy.
