I put the word "victory" referring to WWII in quotation marks here, because I don't think that in a war, especially with millions of victims, there can be winners

I was reflecting a bit on this earlier. The big Russian celebrations on the 9th of May and 23rd of February is quite a bit distasteful. Unlike the Germans, the Russians didn't really learn anything from WWII.

In Norway we don't celebrate it (well, for sure it was celebrated greatly in 1945), but at least the flags are going up at the 8th of May. We don't call it the victory day, but the liberation day as the German occupation efficiently ended at that day. People were still killed by the SS and due to war actions all up until that date, and in large parts of Finnmark towards the Russian border the Germans torched down every single building to make sure the Soviet army (that came over the border to "liberate" it) wouldn't have any shelter. For some people the freedom came with quite a bit of a bitter taste. Well - everything considered, compared to many other countries, Norway was "lucky" with WW2. Limited amount of causalities, and the Germans were far more oppressive i.e. in Poland than in Norway.

My youngest was born at the 8th of May, and I was at first happy that he was born on such a special day ... that day I was talking with was a Polish and a Finnish - and it just dawned on me that it wasn't that much of a "victory day" for the poor Polish that had to endure many decades under the Soviet "sphere of influence", and also not for Finland that (albeit a bit earlier) lost their second biggest city as well as shipping access to quite big parts of their most industrialized territory.