President Vladimir Putin will mark the anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany on Monday as Russian forces stepped up attacks on Ukraine in one of Europe’s deadliest conflicts since World War II.
The parade comes a day after Russian forces bombed a rural school in eastern Ukraine, killing about 60 people, President Vladimir Zelensky said.
The governor of Luhansk region said about 90 people took shelter at a school in Bilochorivka on Saturday when it was bombed.
“As a result of the Russian attack on Bilohorivka in the Luhansk region, about 60 civilians were killed, who simply hid in the school, hiding from shelling,” Zelenski said in his evening video address. There was no response from Moscow to the news.
Putin, Russia’s leader since 1999, has used Victory Day in recent years to kill the West from a rostrum in Red Square before a parade of troops, tanks, missiles and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
This spring, over the nine domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral will include supersonic fighters, strategic bombers and, for the first time since 2010, an Il-80 Doomsday command aircraft carrying the top Russian leader in the event. of nuclear war.
Putin has repeatedly likened the war in Ukraine – which he mistakenly describes as a battle against dangerous “Nazi” nationalists in Ukraine – to the challenge the Soviet Union faced when Adolf Hitler invaded in 1941.
“Our common duty is to prevent the renaissance of Nazism, which has brought so much suffering to people from different countries,” Putin said in a message to the peoples of 12 former Soviet republics, including Ukraine and Georgia.
Ukraine and its allies have denied accusations of Nazism in Ukraine and that Russia is struggling to survive against an aggressive West, saying the Kremlin leader has unleashed an unprovoked war in an attempt to rebuild the Soviet Union.
Putin, who has repeatedly expressed resentment at the West’s treatment of Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, says Ukraine has been used by the United States to threaten Russia.
US President Joe Biden has described Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as a battle in a much broader global battle between democracy and autocracy, and has repeatedly called Putin a war criminal. In a speech in Warsaw in March, Biden said the former KGB spy could not stay in power.
Russia denies Ukrainian and Western allegations that its forces committed war crimes after the February 24 invasion.
The day before the symbolic Victory Day parade, the Black Sea city of Odessa was the target of multiple missile strikes. In Mariupol, other Ukrainian fighters at the Azovstal steel plant in the besieged port city staged a press conference on Sunday, saying they had been “abandoned” by the government while Russian attacks continued.
map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Sergei Gaidai, the governor of Lugansk, where the bombed school was located, told the Guardian that he believed the 30 people who had fled were outside the building. He said there was little hope for those under the rubble.
“Unfortunately, they are probably dead,” he said. “Because the building collapsed. Besides, the air bomb is not a rocket, its explosion produces extremely high temperatures. That’s probably why people didn’t survive. “
Putin has said he intends to take over the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk by May 9, when Russia celebrates Victory Day.
In a speech marking Ukraine’s Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation on May 8, Zelensky said his country pays tribute to all those who helped Adolf Hitler’s victory and accused Russia of repeating his crimes.
He said: “Every year on May 8, together with the entire civilized world, we honor all those who defended the planet from Nazism during World War II. Millions of lives lost, mutilated destinies, tortured souls and millions of reasons to say evil: never again!
“We knew the price our ancestors paid for this wisdom. We knew how important it was to keep it and pass it on to posterity. But we had no idea that our generation would witness the desecration of words that, as it turned out, were not true for everyone.
“This year we say ‘Never again’ in a different way. We hear “Never Again” in a different way. Sounds painful, cruel. Not surprisingly, but with a question mark. You say: never again? Tell Ukraine about it. “
Zelenski continued: “On February 24, the word ‘never’ was deleted. Shot and bombed. From hundreds of rockets at 4 o’clock in the morning that woke up all of Ukraine. We heard terrible explosions. We heard: again! ”
Ilya Samoilenko, a lieutenant in the Azov Regiment in Mariupol, said his comrades-in-arms would be executed if captured by the Russians and that the surrender would be a “gift” to the enemy. “We are witnessing Russian crimes,” he told the city’s Azovstal steel company. “Surrender is not an option because Russia is not interested in our lives.
Meanwhile, the last civilians rescued from the besieged complex reached safety on Ukrainian territory late Sunday night. The journey of just over 200 km took two days, as the convoy of buses was held for hours at Russian checkpoints, and those inside were interrogated.
There were 51 civilians who took refuge in the Azovstal complex and about 120 others who walked or took elevators around the city to a pick-up point in a ruined shopping center. “I didn’t think we would recover alive, so I have no plans for my future,” said Natalia, who has worked for Azovstal all her life and then joined the bunker network for more than two months.
Men, women and children eat and drink in a food tent in Zaporizhia serving the evacuees after arriving from Mariupol. Photo: ed ram / The Guardian
In other developments:
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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised new weapons and other equipment to Ukraine after a surprise visit to the country, during which he toured Irpen, a suburb of Kyiv and the scene of some of Russia’s worst early attacks, was among Western leaders who made . He also said Canada would remove trade tariffs on all Ukrainian imports to Canada next year.
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The United Kingdom has expanded its sanctions against Russia to include punitive tariffs on imports of Russian precious metals, as well as bans on the export of certain products from the United Kingdom.
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The wife of US President Jill Biden met with the First Lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska during another unannounced visit on Sunday to mark Mother’s Day. Meanwhile, U2’s Bono and the Edge presented themselves at a bomb shelter in Kyiv.
Reuters contributed to this report
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