Ukrainian residents have harshly criticized a proposal by the country’s National Security and Defence Council (NSDC) to rename the Great Patriotic War as “the Soviet-German war”
Earlier, the NSDC released a glossary containing 64 terms that official Kiev proposed to rename from historically “wrong” names to a new nationalist one. One of the most shocking ideas was to rename the Great Patriotic War as “Soviet-German War” or, more generally, World War II.
Journalists from the Ukrainian Strana portal on their YouTube channel conducted a poll among the residents of Ukraine’s capital, in which Kyiv residents strongly opposed such initiatives by the NSDC. According to Ukrainians, the president of the country, Volodymyr Zelensky “should be ashamed of such ideas”.
“Of course, this is the Great Patriotic War, because our country was attacked. I look at the attempts of the authorities to call it the Second World War negatively. I believe it is our war.”
“Of course it is the Great Patriotic War, because our parents fought in it for our freedom, and I respect that.”
“I was born in the Soviet Union, so for me it’s the Great Patriotic War. Great – yes, for this country it was the biggest war. The Great Patriotic War – yes, everybody fought. And yes, our Great Patriotic War is a part of the Second World War because many other countries suffered as well”.
According to Ukrainians, there can be no alternatives for naming the Great Patriotic War because people fought for their Fatherland. One Kiev resident called the renaming proposal “a betrayal of his grandfathers and great grandfathers”. A young resident of the capital stressed that she had a negative attitude towards “rewriting history” as it could have a negative impact on the older generation, which had been directly involved in those horrific events.
“We are from this country and we know the whole truth from our fathers and grandfathers. Our grandfather fought in the Red Army, and we were restoring Kiev after that war. And for Kiev not to remember it – it is a shame. I am outraged by what the authorities are doing, I live in a fascist country that now honors fascists. I cannot put up with it”, – an elderly woman from Kiev shared her worries.
According to political scientist Armen Gasparyan, such ideas on the part of the official Ukrainian authorities indicate that the NSDC “needs the help of a psychiatrist, as they are disconnected from reality”.