Did an LGBT parade take place in Ukraine on May 9, 2023, instead of a Victory Parade? No, that's not true: no parade, neither military nor LGBT, took place in Ukraine on that day.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here), published on TikTok on May 8, 2023, by the pro-Russian account @proritsatel.tm after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had submitted a draft law to the Ukrainian parliament, proposing that May 8 will be the Day of Remembrance and Victory over Nazism in the Second World War.
The same video was shared by numerous accounts on the same platform (examples can be found here, here and here).
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Fri May 12 11:44:20 2023 UTC)
The video opens with the graphic, in Russian:
❗️Зеленский подписал указ, по которому 9 мая на Украине теперь будет праздноваться Дня Европы, вместо Дня Победы.
А вместо парада Победы, будет парад лгбт. 😳
Translated by Lead Stories staff into English, the text reads:
❗️Zelenskyy signed a decree, according to which May 9 will now be celebrated as Europe Day in Ukraine, instead of Victory Day.
And instead of the Victory Parade, there will be an LGBT parade. 😳
The video shared on TikTok is an extract from Zelenskyy's speech, held on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance and Victory over Nazism in World War II, published in the morning of May 8, 2023 on the President of Ukraine's official website:
Today, I signed the relevant decree, and every year from tomorrow, May 9, we will commemorate our historic unity - the unity of all Europeans who destroyed Nazism and will defeat Ruscism. This will be the Day of Europe.
But Zelenskyy did not mention any parade for May 9, 2023, neither military nor LGBT and no international or local media reported about it.
Victory Day is one of Russia's most important public holidays: it marks Nazi Germany's surrender that came into force at 11:01 p.m. on May 8, 1945. In Moscow this was May 9 already, which became the Soviet Union's "Victory Day." In France, Britain and the United States, May 8 is marked as "Victory in Europe Day."
The first victory parade on Red Square was held on June 24, 1945. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian President Boris Yeltsin made it an annual event from 1995.
Ukraine used to have victory parades too: after independence in 1991, the first parade was held in 1995 to celebrate the golden jubilee of the Victory in Europe. May 9 parades were cancelled for the first time in 2014 in most Ukrainian regions after the armed conflict in the eastern part of the country started in the same year.
