You're reading: Yushchenko upset over Victory Day celebration in Ukraine

Ukraine's ex-president and Our Ukraine Party leader Viktor Yuschenko has said he was outraged that many Ukrainians celebrated the Victory Day on May 9 under red banners.

"I will say it frankly: for the past few years I have not felt the trauma that I experienced on May 9. What kind of a nation would mark this day by standing under the red banner?!" Yuschenko said during events commemorating victims of the Communist repressions at the Bykivnia Graves National Reserve on Sunday.

"If that is our victory, why are we standing in the historical anteroom? Why do we listen when we are being told, ‘Dear Ukrainians, the victory could have happened even without you! Without Ukraine the fight would have taken three more days’," the Our Ukraine leader was quoted as saying by the party’s spokesperson.

"This is how they always treat a nation which failed to consolidate itself, a nation which is still a population," he said.

Bykivnia, the largest mass grave in Ukraine, "is one of strong symbols of what has always been done under the red flag," he said. "Bykyvnia is a place for the best doctor, the best teacher, the best philistine, the best peasant," the Our Ukraine leader said.

He called on Ukrainians to form the nation and to remember the tragic pages of the history. The nation-formation also requires an answer as to why the Bykivnia crimes became possible, he said.

The problem is not just Stalin but also the Communist regime which saw Ukraine as an invading regime, Yuschenko said. "Only the invading power prohibits the language and exterminates people," he said. "Only invaders, slaves and fools" do not speak the national language, he said.

This is why today it is particularly important to restore national dignity and national unity, he said. "There is only one formula of power – unity from East to West, from South to North. Do not forget the main thing: we are Ukrainians," Yuschenko said.

For her part, Ukraine’s ex-prime minister and Batkivschyna Party leader Yulia Tymoshenko linked the Repressions Victims Day with the loss of the Ukrainian independence.

"The day of commemorating the victims of political repressions is not only a tribute to the past, but a caution for the future – a demonstrative illustration of the dreadful consequences resulting from the loss by Ukraine of its independence, democratic achievements, the freedom of speech and the respect for civil rights," Tymoshenko said in a statement posted on her party’s website.

"We remember those who had their lives taken away from them by the totalitarian system. We are heading to the dreadful and at the same time holy places, such as Bykivnia near Kiyv, where hundreds of thousands of people lie in mass graves, deprived even of the right to be buried according to the Christian tradition," Tymoshenko said.

These people "lost their lives because of the dictators’ lust for power, because they dared to think otherwise, and thus atoned for the sin of the Ukrainian lack of nationhood," she said.

On this mournful day each one must not only commemorate the innocent victims with a commemorative candle, but also do everything to ensure that "the shadow of totalitarianism never returns to our land, it never occurs to those currently in power in their worst nightmare to repeat the path of dictatorship and to prevent the restoration of any newest empire whatsoever," Tymoshenko said.