Came to lay flowers in Glory Park: police in Kyiv detained an elderly woman for wearing a side cap with a red star

Police in Kyiv detained an elderly woman who came to the city’s Park of Glory on Victory Day to lay flowers, because she was wearing a military-style cap (pilotka) with a red star — a symbol banned in Ukraine.

This was reported by Ukrainian TV channel “Novyny.LIVE.”

“Incident in central Kyiv: a woman came to lay flowers in Park of Glory wearing banned symbols… She was taken to the Pechersk district police department,” read the statement on the channel’s Telegram.

In the video published by the channel, several police officers approach the woman, who intended to lay flowers at a monument. They demanded she remove the cap bearing the Soviet red star, citing its ban under Ukrainian law. The woman refused and responded by saying she would demand the officers be sent to the front lines.

“I won’t take it off; you can’t even see the star. But your swastika is visible. I’ll be demanding you get sent to the front. You’re harassing me. I’ve already been to the station six times — and they always end up apologizing afterward… I pity you. The authorities have mutilated you. You probably haven’t even read ‘Mumu’ (a short story by Russian author Ivan Turgenev),” the woman said in the video.

The woman’s name is Halyna Petrovna. According to Strana.ua, last year on Victory Day she also came to lay flowers at the Eternal Flame in Kyiv, dressed in Soviet-era clothing, including a pilotka. At that time, police issued her an administrative citation for displaying Soviet symbols.

In 2023, President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law officially shifting the commemoration of Victory in World War II from May 9 to May 8, rebranding it as the Day of Remembrance and Victory over Nazism. May 9 was instead designated as Europe Day in Ukraine.

The dismantling of Soviet-related monuments and the renaming of streets began in 2015 under the decommunization law. Since then, Ukrainian authorities have pursued policies aimed at eliminating Soviet and Russian historical legacies. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has previously stated that Ukrainian authorities have, for years, pursued a course of aggressive derussification and forced assimilation.