The following release was issued by the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America on April 27.
On Friday, April 24, Russia unveiled images of Vladimir Putin’s pet project: a new Russian Orthodox cathedral, located in the center of a “military theme park” near Moscow, which was set to open on May 9. Putin has fixated on May 9 unlike any other Soviet or Russian ruler since Stalin, even more so on this 75th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. Inside this cathedral, so-called religious mosaics depict Putin alongside his minister of defense and the director of the FSB (the modern-day successor to the KGB). Another mosaic depicts Stalin’s portrait held above a crowd of Soviet soldiers during the World War II Victory Day parade of 1945 on Red Square. In a final act of sacrilege, the cathedral walls display a tribute in mosaic to Russia’s illegal invasion and ongoing military occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea, with one fragment declaring “our Crimea.”