Ukraine will now celebrate ‘Europe Day’ on Russia’s ‘Victory Day’

Ukraine will now celebrate “Europe Day” on Russia’s “Victory Day,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced Monday. 

The Kyiv leader decreed that Ukraine will celebrate Europe Day May 9, the same day Russia celebrates the end of World War II. 

“Now, as 80 years ago, Ukraine is fighting against total evil. Now, just like 80 years ago, Ukraine is fighting for the future – its own and that of the whole of Europe, the whole free world. Now, as 80 years ago, we rely on the common strength of free nations and know that together with them we will always be part of a free Europe that will not submit to evil,” Zelensky said in remarks.

“And together with all of free Europe, we will celebrate Europe Day on May 9 in Ukraine. A united Europe, the basis of which should be and will be peace. Our Europe, which Ukraine has always been, is, and will be a part of,” he said, lauding Europe for supporting Ukraine through years of Russian aggression and the war that started with Moscow’s invasion early last year.

Zelensky has long praise Europe and framed Kyiv’s war as a battle for the freedom of all of Europe — and he’s pressed for the European Union to admit Ukraine as a member state. 

Zelensky also said Monday that he submitted a proposal to Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada that would make May 8 the “the Day of Remembrance and Victory over Nazism in the Second World War.” 

“We destroyed evil together! In the same way as we are now opposing a similar evil together,” Zelensky said of World War II. 

“Unfortunately, evil has returned. Like back then evil rushed to our cities and villages, so it is doing now, like back then it killed our people, so it is doing it now. Although now it is another aggressor, the goal is the same – enslavement or destruction.”

Ukraine has said it shot down dozens of rockets over Kyiv over the weekend as the war wages on.