Ukraine’s fight is not just about its present and future, but also about the need for an honest acknowledgment of its past.
Kyiv Post
75
9 мин чтения
0 просмотров
Earlier this year, 24 hours after the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a milestone gathering was held in Westminster. On Feb. 25, 2026, British ministers, lords, lawmakers, journalists, and leading historians came together for a single purpose: to clarify who really won World War II and Ukraine’s role in that victory.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP led the forum entitled “The Ukraine Factor: Building Ukraine’s WW2 Legacy.” Its premise was simple but explosive. For more than 80 years, underlined by Moscow’s narrative that began with Stalin, the world has been given the impression that Russia was the primary power behind the defeat of Nazi Germany. The role of the Western Allies has been downplayed, and Ukraine’s role has been erased from history. And Russian President Vladimir Putin has weaponized that lie to justify his 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
As we commemorate Victory Day 2026 – the 81st anniversary of the Allied triumph over Nazi Germany, the Russians keep bombarding Ukrainian cities, soldiers are dying at the front lines, and families are still burying their dead.
But for once, the world is finally recognizing that the Ukrainians not only survived World War II, they played a significant role in helping win it.
There would have been no Soviet Union victory without Ukraine. Full stop.
And to know that truth, spoken aloud in Westminster, matters a lot now that Ukraine is again fighting for its life, and most of the free world is behind it.
Russia says it will not continue trilateral negotiations with the US and Ukraine unless Kyiv withdraws from parts of Donbas. Ukrainian officials dismissed the demand, calling it proof Moscow is not seeking peace. Talks with US partners continue on humanitarian and security issues as diplomatic efforts remain stalled.
The big lie
According to the story we have been told, the Soviet Union crushed Hitler, and its victory was, as emphasized by Stalin himself in a victory speech in May 1945 in the Kremlin, essentially based on everything to do with Russia. Russian soldiers, Russian sacrifice, Russian honor. This is a myth – a crudely constructed one.
Ukrainian contributions were labeled “Soviet” or simply credited to Russia. Ukrainian commanders became footnotes. Ukrainian casualties and cities that held the line came to symbolize Russian bravery. Western historians working from a scanty source base of the Cold War period tended to repeat these distortions unwittingly. The result? Generations were led to believe that Russia bore the brunt of the Eastern Front alone.
What the history books should say
The answer is provided by the authentic historical record. Ukrainians constituted one of the largest contingents by number in the Red Army. Millions of them. They battled at Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk and Berlin. They won the highest Soviet military honors. They died in horrifying numbers – approximately 8 to 10 million Ukrainian deaths, military and civilian alike.
Ukraine became the principal crucible of their terrible war.
There would have been no Soviet Union victory without Ukraine. Full stop.
But the Soviet historians buried these facts. Russia was always credited with almost everything. The result? A fundamentally false story of how Nazi Germany was defeated.
Ukraine was divided until 1939 between the Soviet Union and Poland, and was the target for both Hitler and Stalin. And as the celebrated US historian Timothy Snyder noted, both dictators viewed Ukraine as a “breadbasket,” and Hitler coveted Ukraine as the site for “lebensraum” – the preferred colonized homeland of the German master race.
Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, primarily through Ukraine, turned Nazi-Soviet allies into mortal foes. Ukraine became the principal crucible of their terrible war.
The human casualties and destruction were staggering – millions of civilian and military deaths against Soviet forces. Nevertheless, as it still does today, Ukraine somehow managed to retain and even re-emphasize its existence on the political map of the world.
Its vast territories were united for the first time in its modern history under Stalin, in a so-called Ukrainian state – the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR), but that was under Moscow’s control. This was not out of any sympathy for the Ukrainians – Stalin had murdered millions of people in the 1930s with an artificial famine, purges, and terror – but self-serving political expediency.
And 81 years ago, between April and June 1945, the Ukrainian SSR became one of the founders of the United Nations at the San Francisco conference.
Putin’s revisionism
For decades after World War II, the Soviet Union hid uncomfortable truths. Today we know that one of the first acts of the Holocaust came in September 1941, when Nazi German forces at the Babyn Yar ravine in Kyiv killed, initially, about 30,000 Jews.
But the world still does not know about the systematic murder of thousands of Ukrainian, Polish, Belarusian and Baltic political prisoners by the Soviets as the German forces approached.
Or, that only as late as April 1990, did Gorbachev publicly confess that the Soviets, while an ally of Hitler, murdered 22,000 Polish officers and civilians in 1940 in Katyn and Kharkiv. In fact, Russia did not release documents about the Nazi-Soviet pact until October 1992, that is, following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Putin's manipulative rewriting of history was never rhetorical.
Even this limited step toward truthfulness was reversed by Vladimir Putin. He reimposed the revisionist line, which exonerates Moscow from blame either for the outbreak of World War II or for the connection with Nazi Berlin. Conversely, he uses the victory over Germany – an accomplishment regarded primarily as Russia’s – to support Moscow’s claims as a great power with a right to dominate its neighbors.
Putin’s manipulative rewriting of history was never rhetorical. It has been the ideological premise for his imperial designs. His assertion in December 2010 that Russians would have won World War II had millions of Ukrainians not helped on the battlefield was not merely historical reductionism. It was a denial of Ukrainian will, sacrifice, and, in the end, independence. He used it to convince Western leaders – including some in the Trump administration – that helping Ukraine is pointless.
Reality shatters the narrative
Ukraine’s resilience, especially since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, has proved otherwise. Today’s Ukrainian soldiers are the descendants of those who fought from Stalingrad to Berlin. The legacy was always there, acknowledged or not.
The fact that Ukraine has survived more than 12 years of Russia’s latest aggression, including four years of all-out brutal war and, in many cases, pushed back Russian forces, contradicts everything Putin has told us in his propaganda about Ukrainian weakness and Russian invincibility. The hollowness of the grand parades, the historical manipulation and the assertions of greatness have all been exposed by a nation fighting for its survival and freedom.
The Westminster reckoning
At the meeting in the British parliament, the world finally began to admit to the fact that so many were misled and wrong about Ukraine. Correcting the record now is not an academic exercise. It is about making sure that the next time a tyrant tries to rationalize conquest through historical revisionism, we are aware of the lie and its implications.
Ironically, Germany, which was the aggressor of World War II, is one of Ukraine’s backers in its struggle today, and Poland, which suffered along with Ukraine under Nazi and Soviet rule, is one of Kyiv’s most steadfast allies.
Today, Ukraine is fighting to safeguard its sovereignty and democratic choice as a European nation.
The geopolitical realignments have since changed, but the core issue remains the same: Will Ukraine be able to exist as a sovereign state, or will it be subjugated by Russia, a predatory imperial power that was both so under the Tsars and through the communist period and still is under Putin?
The path forward
As we observe Victory Day 2026, the Ukrainian aspect of that victory assumes new urgency and significance. Ukraine was not a passive victim of World War II but an active participant in it whose sacrifice proved vital to defeating Nazi Germany. The Soviet “liberation” that followed came with enormous cost: Ukraine paid a huge price in blood and subjugation before, during, and after the war.
Today, Ukraine is fighting to safeguard its sovereignty and democratic choice as a European nation, defending its right to self-determination that the Allies and the new United Nations claimed to champion in 1945. In this sense, it is a continuation of the struggle that began in 1939, when Hitler and Stalin decided that might makes right and that they could carve up Europe as they pleased.
Ukraine’s fight is not just about its present and future, but also about the need for an honest acknowledgment of its past. Only when that recognition is achieved – when Ukraine’s sacrifice in World War II and suffering under Russian rule are recognized, and its sovereignty and security are ensured – can Victory Day be seen as a day of liberation and not a reminder of oppression then, and the menace of renewed subjugation today.
Despite the terrible ordeal of World War II, Ukraine reappeared on the world stage. More recently, it has managed to withstand Russia’s new barbaric war and to win recognition and respect as an indomitable and justifiably proud nation.
This is the Ukrainian dimension of Victory Day – both then and now.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
