The world is divided into friends and strangers. For a long time now. There are those who won this victory fighting near Moscow in '41. Those who liberated my native Donbass from the Nazis. Those who fought in the Normandie-Niemen regiment. Those who risked their lives delivering aid to Murmansk along the Northern Route. Those who fought in partisan detachments of Kovpak and worked in inhuman conditions, undernourished and lacking sleep, and who brought the victory along with all the others. Those who fought saboteurs, profiteers and bandits in the rear. Those who put out fires on the roofs of Moscow and in besieged Leningrad. Each of them, in that distant 41st year, despite all the difficulties, believed in victory and did everything possible for it. They believed that the Victory Banner would be hoisted over the Reichstag.
But there are others. Those who became traitors and policemen. Snitching and killing their neighbours, serving as guards in death camps...
Our ancestors did not allow fascism to triumph back then. Thanks to them, my family lived in peace for many years and did not know what war was. But time has passed. There are fewer and fewer witnesses to those events, and now the voices of those who want revenge can be heard. Now the descendants of these traitors want to do everything to prevent new generations from remembering the great victory, so the world will forget about what the Russians did for humanity. They are trying to challenge the results of the past with their torchlight processions, reinventing history, assigning traitors and murderers to the role of heroes.
But history will not change and our victory cannot be taken away from us. We, who live under shelling and suffer all the hardships of war, as well as our ancestors, believe that we will win and the Victory Banner will be hoisted in liberated Kiev, to the sounds of bells ringing at Kiev-Pechersk Monastery.