On the 64th anniversary of the end of World War II, Viktor Yushchenko said he thought about the dead and the survivors, the victors and those who fought "on all fronts and in the resistance."
The president gets most of his support in the nationalist west of Ukraine, where a regional parliament voted in March to remove a public monument to Soviet WWII soldiers and place it in a museum of Soviet totalitarianism, saying the statue had no historical or cultural value.
"This is our shared, united, indivisible, holy and great victory", said Yushchenko, adding that the victory was won by Ukrainians together with other peoples.
Western Ukraine was the stronghold of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, a nationalist group initially set up to protect ethnic Ukrainians from Poles that engaged in guerrilla fighting with Soviet troops and collaborated with Nazi Germans during the war.
Although he did not mention it specifically in his speech, Yushchenko has sought recognition for the group, and a statue to one of its founders, Stepan Bandera, was unveiled in Lvov in 2007.
Yulia Tymoshenko, who is seen as having moved closer to Russia since falling out with Yushchenko last year, congratulated veterans, emphasizing the victory over fascism.
"I know that today affects you most of all, my dear war veterans," the prime minister said in a statement released by the government press service. "You are disturbed and painfully wounded by the worry that the exploits of millions of heroes, who protected the planet from fascism, is gradually forgotten, that the honor and the glory of the great victory is darkened daily by little disputes, and sometimes also ingratitude."
"This categorically not the case," she declared.
Yushchenko said almost no country was more affected by the war than Ukraine, and called for the country to come together.
"More than 7 million Ukrainians were sent to the front in World War II. Each second one failed to return home. Every other one of the survivors became a disabled war veteran," the president said. "In the epicenter of the World War, Ukraine sustained practically the highest level of casualties and destruction."
The actions of resistance groups on the Eastern front during World War II is a contentious issue between Moscow and some former Soviet republics, particularly the Baltic States, where some nationalists fought with the Nazis against Soviet troops.
The relocation of the Bronze Soldier, a Soviet-era monument to the Red Army, in Estonia in 2007 sparked violent protests from ethnic Russians. One person was killed and several dozen injured in clashes with police. Moscow issued strong protests with some lawmakers calling for cutting diplomatic ties with Tallinn.
