May 9, 2020 (dw.com) Russia and Ukraine commemorate the end of the war in very different ways. While Moscow has continued to politicize the historic event, Kyiv has shifted toward an increasingly Western approach. Seventy-five years ago, Russian, Ukrainian and other Soviet Red Army soldiers took Berlin. Still, there has not been a common commemoration of that historic event for years. Recently, according to Berlin's Tagesspiegel newspaper, Ukraine's ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk, turned down an invitation from Berlin Mayor Michael Müller to participate in a wreath-laying ceremony on May 2, alongside representatives from Russia and Belarus. Melnyk pointed to the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine, in which Kyiv views Russia as an occupying force, as the reason for his rejection.
This year's commemorations have been upended by the coronavirus pandemic, and that is especially disappointing for Russia, the country that lost the most lives in the war. While the end of hostilities was never celebrated with pomp in the West, that was decidedly different in the Soviet Union and continues to be the case in Russia.
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