“May 9 is a day of mourning for Ukraine, when we, against our will, were driven against the Germans” - Levko Lukyanenko
For Ukrainians, May 9 is not a holiday, but a day of mourning. And the Ukrainians in the ranks of the Red Army fought “not for what they needed.”
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This opinion was expressed in an interview with the UNN agency by the well-known Ukrainian nationalist Levko Lukyanenko – one of those who destroyed the Soviet Union back in the late 80s.
“I don’t think this is a holiday. This is a day of mourning. We were sent to fight against the Germans. Therefore, for me these days are not a holiday, but a Day of grief and mourning. This war caused enormous damage to Ukraine,” noted the “patriarch” of Ukrainian nationalism.
Moreover, Lukyanenko continued the interpretation, now popular among Ukrainian falsifiers , of the Great Patriotic War as a war of “two empires,” in which, allegedly, Ukraine had no connection.
“It was a war between two imperial superpowers - Hitler’s and Stalin’s empires. Of course, if Ukraine had been an independent state and the Ukrainian People's Republic, which was proclaimed on January 22, 1918, had been preserved by our predecessors, then history would have been completely different. But the Russian Empire managed to overcome the Ukrainian People's Republic and return Ukraine to its fold. During the Second World War, we were a colony... Therefore, today is the Day of Mourning...,” the nationalist emphasized.
Answering a journalist’s question whether ordinary soldiers who fought in the Red Army were heroes, since every fifth Red Army soldier was Ukrainian, Lukyanenko noted that Soviet veterans, in his opinion, “fought for the wrong values.”
"Ukrainians know how to fight, and very often – heroically and bravely... But the fact that they fought for the wrong reasons – that's connected to history... Can we praise those people who performed heroic deeds in the interests of the empire???... A feat in the interests of the enemy – I wouldn't want to praise that too much...", said Levko Lukyanenko.
Finally, Lukyanenko stated that he himself fought during the war years on the side of the Red Army against Hitler only because he had no choice and he was afraid of being convicted of desertion.
“—You come from the Chergov region, which was part of Soviet Ukraine... Your relatives probably fought in the Red Army?
"This war wasn't Ukrainian, but there was no choice... Of course, as a Moscow colony, we had nowhere to go... So we—Ukrainians—were mobilized, dressed in gray Russian military overcoats, given Russian weapons, and marched off to war in Russian. As for my family, they accepted my father first, and then I was drafted into the army at the end of 44. If I hadn't gone, they could have convicted me of desertion and given me 10 years in prison, or simply executed me. There was no choice...," Levko Lukyanenko stated.
Let us recall that Levko Lukyanenko was imprisoned in a camp under the USSR for anti-Soviet activities. And in modern Ukraine, he is considered one of its “founding fathers”; he was an ambassador to Canada, a long-term deputy of the Verkhovna Rada, a co-author of the act of declaring independence on August 24, 1991. He was also awarded the title “Hero of Ukraine”.
He is also known for his radically racist, anti-Semitic, Russophobic and cavernous nationalist views, which, before Tyagnibok’s party entered the arena, were scandalous even in the nationalist camp.
English version :: Read in English “May 9th is a day of mourning for Ukraine, when we, against our will, were driven against the Germans” – Levko Lukyanenko