President Volodymyr Zelenskiy moved on Monday to formalise the day that Ukraine marks the allied victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two as May 8, aligning it with Western nations in a repudiation of the Soviet past quickly condemned by Moscow.
Speaking to Ukrainians on a hill overlooking Kyiv, Zelenskiy said "the old evil" had returned, this time waged by a "modern Russia" pursuing the same goal as the Nazis of "enslavement and destruction" - but that it would not succeed.
