NARRATIVE – The five days that led kyiv to definitively turn its back on communism are the same ones that precipitated the collapse of the USSR.
Ukraine is preparing to sadly celebrate its national day on August 24. President Zelensky has decreed a curfew in several major cities, fearing that on the 31st anniversary of its independence, Moscow will foment “something particularly disgusting, particularly cruel“. A date all the more symbolic as it marks Ukraine’s final farewell to the Soviet Union.
In 1991, this famous August 24 marked a “incredible acceleration of history“, commented the 8 p.m. newspaper on Antenne 2. “The dislocation of the Soviet empire is confirmed day by day, not to say hour by hour.“, stated the presenter from Paris. Around 4 p.m., a first dispatch fell: the Russian President, Boris Yeltsin, signed a decree officially recognizing the independence of the Baltic Republics of Estonia and Latvia. An hour later, a new flash: Ukraine, too, declared its independence. An event “fundamental“, according to Laure Mandeville…