Liberation Parade

As I mentioned before, there was a parade on Thursday to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Kiev from the fascists (which actually occured sometime in November). Pictures above.

The parade itself was remarkably short, I was told that the victory day parades in May are much more impressive. I would say it took about 5-10 minutes for everyone to march or drive by. There were a fair amount of people there, but it wasn't overly crowded and a lot of atendees really didn't seem to be taking the proceedings very seriously.

What I thought was interesting was that there didn't seem to be any attempt to "Ukrainize" the proceedings at all. Marching soldiers appeared to be wearing Soviet-vintage uniforms and Soviet-era victory banners were carried in abundance. I suppose it would have been a bit silly to attempt to inject any Ukrainian nationalism in the proceedings, as Ukrainan nationalists in the early 1940s were most likely members of a Waffen-SS division or at the least were mildly pleased to have Uncle Joe kicked out of the country. But it was admittedly slightly surprising at first to see a bunch of red everywhere instead of the blue and yellow to which I am growing more accustomed.