On 7 May, President Trump rebranded Victory in Europe Day as “Victory Day for World War II,” turning a symbol of Allied unity into a celebration of American supremacy. Praising “the unmatched might of the American Armed Forces,” the proclamation reshapes the most collective war in history into a monument to US exceptionalism, boosting Trump’s peacemaking image.
By crediting the 250,000 US troops who died fighting the Nazis, the declaration shifts the narrative, claiming “without those sacrifices, this war would not have been won.” This echoes Trump’s earlier renaming of Veterans Day to “World War I Victory Day,” part of a broader effort to recast both world wars as American-led triumphs, sidelining their multinational roots.
Timed just before WWII’s 80th anniversary, Trump’s move highlights the US distancing itself from Europe, where a united front against Nazism built the postwar transatlantic alliance sealed by NATO — now strained by America’s retreat.
However, there’s another target in the crossfire: Moscow. The Kremlin has long solidified its post-WWII rivalry with the West through a myth of Soviet sacrifice, a narrative that crumbled after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, launched under the same “anti-Nazi” banner, but was reignited when Trump returned to office, echoing the Kremlin’s “Great Patriotic War” talking points.
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Now, Trump’s move pits the White House against Russia’s long-held grip on 9 May, a date central to its geopolitical claims. But the emerging tension reaches an unexpected crossroads — in Ukraine, where Russia used WWII memory to justify its invasion, the same memory that Trump seeks to cement his peacemaker legacy.
Yet, the ambitions of the two capitals converge in the middle — in Ukraine. By celebrating Victory Day with Europe for the first time this year, Kyiv broke free from Russia’s 9 May cult, pouring the weight of its WWII legacy — the very foundation of Putin’s Victory Day myth — into a continent caught between the two powers.
One day’s difference that shaped the century
The difference between 8 May and 9 May was just a matter of hours, but it created a memory divide that still shapes global narratives. Nazi Germany surrendered late on 8 May 1945, Central European Time — already 9 May in Moscow.
While the West marked victory on 8 May, the Kremlin claimed the next day, recasting the Nazi invasion of the USSR — the so-called Great Patriotic War — as the central front of WWII. Framing its massive losses as proof of singular heroism, the Soviet Union cast itself not as one of many victors, but the victor, positioning itself as the central force in the defeat of the Nazis.
During the Cold War, a minor timing gap hardened into a global divide: 8 May came to symbolize shared sacrifice in the West, while 9 May was elevated into a celebration of Soviet supremacy — a one-day difference that still echoes today.
Despite the key role of the WW2 memory in cementing the USSR population and memory competition with the West, Stalin downplayed the holiday, making 9 May a working day in 1947. Eventually, Victory Day spent decades on the Soviet sidelines, marked with sporadic parades only in 1965, 1985, and 1990.
After the Soviet collapse, 9 May kept fading under Yeltsin, Russia’s first post-Soviet president, until 1995’s 50th anniversary parade brought it back as an annual ritual. However, it was Putin who recognized its untapped potential, turning a dormant ritual into a pillar of Russia’s geopolitical power.
Since taking office in 2000, Putin has transformed Victory Day into a carefully orchestrated blend of militarism, nationalism, and historical myth. The Kremlin poured billions into grander parades across Russian cities — with the Immortal Regiment march drawing 7.8 million participants in 2017 alone — and pulled more global leaders to Red Square military events featuring up to 14,000 troops.
This aggressive militarism came hand in hand with growing Russian exclusivity — a shift that became clear after Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine. Over the years, Putin shifted the focus from Soviet heroism to Russian exceptionalism, a stance that peaked in 2021 when he claimed the USSR, led by Russia, was “alone on the toilsome, heroic, and sacrificial way to victory.”
During the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin took a step further to naming Russians the sole heirs to the Soviet victory, while Putin’s Victory Day speeches, often laced with veiled threats, cast anyone opposing Russia to repeat the fate as Nazi Germany and face “the consequences you have never faced before in your history.”
“East European history is the story of reshaping the world map, rethinking and challenging the post-Cold War order by Russia,” Serhii Plokhy, the Director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, told Radio Liberty. “History is actively used as a weapon in intellectual debates, wars, and conflicts — as we see today in Ukraine.”
The heist Russia can’t afford to lose
The Kremlin’s self-proclaimed victory over Nazism gave it immediate geopolitical leverage — a trend that persists today. Allies overlooked Soviet war crimes and reprisals across Central Europe and eastern Germany, allowing Moscow to turn the “liberated” territories into its communist stronghold, fueling the Cold War.
Moscow’s victory also secured unprecedented influence in the post-war order, with the US gaining veto power in the Security Council and the Soviet Union earning three General Assembly seats — two for Ukraine and Belarus, the hardest-hit republics.
Even the UN bowed to Soviet power, with the Soviet delegation erasing class persecution from the definition of genocide, shielding Moscow from the accountability for Stalin’s “Red Terror,” which claimed millions of lives.
After the Soviet collapse, Putin started leveraging the WW2 mythology to boost Russia’s claim to “special rights” in its near abroad, demanding unquestionable authority over security in territories once “liberated” by the USSR.
Russia has exported its Victory Day celebrations across former Soviet territories and beyond, making the commemoration a loyalty test. By compelling countries to choose between Moscow’s parade and European observances, Russia capitalizes on divisions within the Western alliance.
By tying modern Russian identity to WWII sacrifice, Putin built a system where dissent is framed as dishonoring the war dead — a tactic Moscow has used against Central European countries once under Soviet rule, which sought to remove monuments glorifying the Red Army’s occupation or confront the war crimes the USSR committed while “liberating” them from Nazism.
This mythology became a potent weapon for international intimidation, forging a moral debt that Western powers, especially Germany. The Kremlin has tapped into this bond since the 2014 invasion of Ukraine, using it to avoid sanctions and weaken Berlin’s support for Ukraine, which was already strained by post-war pacifism and economic ties with Russia.
“World War II is at the center of this battle, which is unfolding in Ukraine today,” Serhii Plokhy said. “The history of World War II, under the name ‘Great Patriotic War,’ has been weaponized by Russia in its annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine.”
However, the myth Moscow had exploited for nearly 80 years began to crumble in 2023. Ukraine, gradually distancing itself from Russia’s Victory Day since 2015, officially embraced 8 May as Remembrance and Victory Day over Nazism, making it a public holiday.
This move left 9 May as Europe Day — both a nod to Ukraine’s EU aspirations and a blow to Russia’s efforts to use the date to keep post-Soviet states in its orbit.
The “Russian” victory with a Ukrainian accent
Ukraine’s one-day switch sparked a tectonic shift, pulling the rug from under the Kremlin and toppling the very numbers it had long used to claim “Russian victory over Nazism.”
While the USSR accounted for nearly 26 million deaths, Ukraine alone lost 8-10 million — an astounding share. Unlike Russia, which was only partially occupied, Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova were completely overrun, losing 5 million civilians.
Caught between the German advance and retreat, this region, which Yale historian Timothy Snyder famously dubbed the “Bloodlands,” was disproportionally devastated by both Nazi and Soviet atrocities. From 1941 to 1945, both regimes killed, deported, repressed, or forced millions into labor, slashing Ukraine’s population from nearly 41 million to 27 million.
Ukrainian civilians endured unimaginable losses: as the epicenter of “the Holocaust of bullets,” Ukraine lost 1.5 million Jews, while 2 million Ukrainians were sent to Germany as forced labor. Entire communities were wiped out — 700 cities and 28,000 villages were razed, making up nearly 45% of all Soviet material losses.
The total occupation, which triggered mass conscription, only deepened the losses. Around 7 million Ukrainians fought in the Red Army, making up nearly a quarter of Soviet forces, with one in two soldiers killed and one in four disabled.
Ukrainians, the second-largest Soviet nation, formed four key fronts, earning recognition for their immense contribution. Over 2,500 received prestigious medals, and more than 2,000 were named “Hero of the Soviet Union” — the highest Soviet military honor — including 32 who earned it twice.
However, after the war, Ukrainian military units were rebranded with Russian names, archives detailing Ukraine’s unique war experience were sealed, and Ukrainian achievements were absorbed into a unified “Soviet” narrative, which was gradually rebranded as “Russian.”
Over the years, the Kremlin erased even the symbolic contributions of Ukrainian soldiers, such as the liberation of Auschwitz on 27 January 1945, by the 2nd Ukrainian Front, led by Jewish Ukrainian Anatolii Shapiro, now marked annually as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
However, by breaking from Moscow’s 9 May mythology, Kyiv not only highlights its own WWII legacy but also exposes Russia’s hidden role in the war’s outbreak, undermining the narrative the US could use to rekindle ties with the Kremlin.
The victory origin Russia wants forgotten
By embracing 8 May, Ukraine doesn’t just break free from Russia’s historical monopoly — it forces a reckoning with the WWII truths Moscow has long sought to bury. At the core of this reckoning is the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
Signed in 1939, it divided Eastern Europe between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, with Stalin’s regime complicit in Poland’s dismemberment and the annexation of the Baltics. For decades, the secret protocols remained hidden, only surfacing after the Soviet collapse.
When Nazi forces invaded Poland, the Kremlin seized the opportunity to occupy eastern Poland, home to many Ukrainians and Belarusians, under the pretext of “defending” them. As Hitler pushed west, Stalin took parts of Finland and the Baltic states, only shifting to oppose Nazism after Hitler’s 1941 betrayal.
The Kremlin weaponizes these complexities, suggesting Ukraine’s western territories were “gifts from Stalin to the Poles,” ignoring why the USSR occupied them in the first place.
By adopting 8 May, Ukraine not only embraces European commemoration but also acknowledges that WWII didn’t start in 1941 with Germany’s attack on the USSR, shifting the launch date to 1939 with the USSR as Hitler’s partner, not his victim.
Since 2014, Russia has criminalized the “rehabilitation of Nazism” — a seemingly noble goal that in practice prevents any recognition of the USSR’s collaboration with Nazi Germany.
This collaboration remains the single greatest threat to Russia’s claim to special security privileges in Eastern Europe, especially crucial during peace talks, as Trump’s repeated nods to Putin and his administration’s echoes of Kremlin WWII myths intensify the stakes.
“As Putin builds a cult of innocence, claiming Russia is always the righteous victim, this clashes with the reality of WWII,” historian Timothy Snyder told Spiegel. “Stalin allied with Hitler, and Ukrainians suffered more than Russians, by any measure.”
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