Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova's answer to a media question regarding the 82nd anniversary of Kiev's liberation during the Great Patriotic War
6 November 2025 00:10
1864-06-11-2025
Question: Today marks the liberation of Kiev from Nazi occupation during the Great Patriotic War, in 1943. How, in your view, does the situation 82 years ago mirror that of today's Kiev and the current Ukrainian authorities?
Maria Zakharova: November 6 marks the 82nd anniversary of Kiev's liberation from Nazi occupation by the Red Army's 1st Ukrainian Front, under the command of General Nikolai Vatutin. The Kiev Offensive (November 3−13, 1943) was a critical component of the wider Battle of the Dnieper. This Soviet strategic victory proved decisive for the outcome of the Great Patriotic War, as Hitler's forces suffered a major defeat on the Eastern Front, irrevocably ceding the strategic initiative. Soviet troops confronted a powerful Wehrmacht force of up to 500,000 men, supported by approximately 6,000 artillery pieces and mortars, along with over 500 tanks and aircraft.
The Nazi occupation of Kiev was marked by genocide against the city's population of Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, Belarusians, Poles, and others. The human cost was staggering: from a pre-war population of roughly 850,000, only about 180,000 residents - just over 20 percent - remained at the time of liberation. During more than two years of occupation, the Nazis murdered more than 200,000 people in the Syrets and Darnitsa concentration camps alone; at least 120,000 were executed at Babi Yar, and another 100,000 were deported to Germany for forced labour. Ukrainian nationalists, Banderites, were willing accomplices to the atrocities committed by the Nazi invaders.
In recognition of the mass heroism and courage displayed by its residents during the Great Patriotic War, Kiev was awarded the highest honour - the title of Hero City - on May 8, 1965.
On November 4, 2023, modern-day Bandera supporters desecrated the Hero City of Kiev obelisk, severing the five-pointed gold star from its peak and cutting it into pieces. This act followed the earlier demolition, in February of the same year, of the monument to General Liberator Vatutin at his gravesite near the entrance to Kiev's Mariinsky Park.
It is difficult to imagine that the Soviet soldiers who gave their lives to liberate Kiev from the "brown plague" could have foreseen their descendants in Ukraine desecrating the memory of those to whom they owed their very existence, while simultaneously honouring Nazi criminals complicit in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.
Eight decades later, Kiev is once again occupied, and Nazi ideology has become state policy throughout Ukraine. The country has lost its sovereignty. Today, under the banner of so-called de-communisation and decolonisation, the Kiev regime has institutionalised a policy of historical revisionism, aggressive de-Russification, and the systematic eradication of all symbols and memories linked to the Soviet era, Russian heritage, and our shared past.
However, all attempts to erase a heroic past from popular memory are ultimately doomed. The day will undoubtedly come when this once-prosperous region is liberated from the dominance of Nazi-inspired forces, who continue to exploit and devastate it for their own selfish ends.
These facts underscore the urgent relevance of our goals to denazify and demilitarise Ukraine and eliminate the threats from its territory. These objectives will ultimately be achieved, as the Russian leadership has repeatedly stated.
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