You're reading: Kharkiv cancels Victory Day parade for safety reasons

Kharkiv has cancelled the military parade on Victory Day for safety reasons, Ihor Baluta, the head of the Kharkiv regional state administration, said.

“We have decided that we do not find it possible to hold a military parade on Freedom Square on May 9. It was a difficult decision, both for the region’s administration and for me personally… We planned to hold a military parade involving military equipment and planes, but we have to change our plans, bearing in mind the events in Odesa, Luhansk, and Donetsk, and, most importantly, due to the operative situation… According to the information provided by the Interior Ministry and the Ukrainian Security Service, provocations are planned, which will probably lead to mass casualties,” Baluta told a press conference on Tuesday, May 6. 

“We had asked them to consider restricting mass events because they pose certain risks in terms of the use of equipment and other types of weapons,” Anatoliy Khynevych, chairman of the Kharkiv regional war veterans council, who was also present at the press conference, said.

Valentyna Kopatko, executive director of the Kharkiv regional association of public organizations of disabled war veterans, said the proposal to cancel the military parade on Freedom Square for safety reasons was made by war veterans themselves.

At the same time, Baluta and representatives of war veterans organizations said the ceremonies for laying down wreaths of flowers to the Glory Memorial and the Marshall Konev Height, congratulations of war veterans, and other, less massive events scheduled to take place on the Victory Day will be held according to plan.

“We are only cancelling the most massive event, which, according to our estimations, could have drawn from 50,000 to 85,000 people,” Baluta said.

Svitlana Babitska, director of the culture department of the Kharkiv City Council, said a parade involving military equipment and aviation was scheduled to be held on Kharkiv’s Freedom Square on May 9.

After Kharkiv Mayor Hennadiy Kernes was wounded, presidential candidate Mykhailo Dobkin promised that the parade would be held “despite Kernes’s temporary absence from the city.”