People of Zakarpattia in the battles with the Nazis in World War II and with the Nazis in the current Liberation War of Ukraine

Today, 8 May, marks exactly 80 years since the surrender of Nazi Germany in Europe formally ended the bloodiest World War II in human history, which claimed 50 to 75 million lives. Ukraine's account of the war is one of the most significant. According to the estimates of history researcher Professor Oleksandr Laver, almost 7 million Ukrainians died during the Second World War - 4 million in the Red Army and another 2.8-3 million civilians. ‘Stalin deliberately planned to destroy the Ukrainian people by forming military units of the first echelon of the Red Army mainly from Ukrainians, exposing them to German bullets and tanks first,’ Laver wrote.

However, despite the enormous human losses in the war, the bombed and burned cities and villages, the destroyed economy and infrastructure, 8 May 1945 did not bring peace to Ukraine, it gained neither freedom nor the statehood dreamed of by generations of its sons and daughters: fighting between UPA units and the Red Army and the NKVD continued on Ukrainian lands for several years; the Moscow regime in the postwar period carried out brutal political repressions and mass deportations of Ukrainians from their native lands; instead of an independent Ukraine, a puppet Soviet quasi-republic controlled by Moscow remained.

Zakarpattia in the Second World War had its own, atypical, but no less painful account of the war, as its sons and daughters drank their cup of misery and grief at the fronts...

The Nazis of the twenty-first century do not admit the existence of 40 million people, their 1200-year history, language and faith, destroy Ukrainian cities and villages, historical shrines, centres of national culture and memory, kill, maim, rape, rob and abuse everyone who calls themselves Ukrainians on their land.

Zakarpattia residents, just like 80 years ago, are fighting valiantly in this postponed Liberation War with Russia to defend their homeland, national identity, statehood, democracy and protect Europe from the national chauvinism of the Moscow horde, whose raking gaze once again reaches far into the continent.

Many brave sons of the Silver Land have been awarded orders and medals for their military valour, and have been awarded the title of Hero, but many defenders of the Fatherland have returned home on their shields. But the anger towards the eternal enemy of their combat sworn brothers only grows stronger and motivates them to new military victories, until the last occupier's paw flies out of our land for the first time in more than 300 years. And no efforts of the fake fighters against Nazism - corrupt pro-Kremlin puppets and their supporters with short historical memory - can shake our faith in the victory of the forces of Light over the slaves of Darkness!

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