Veterans mark D-Day with Ukraine on their minds

Ninety-eight-year-old Charles Shay and other veterans returned Monday to France’s Omaha Beach, where 78 years ago they arrived to begin the Allied invasion and liberation of Europe. As they remembered their fallen brothers, they lamented the ongoing war on the continent between Russia and Ukraine. “In 1944, I landed on these beaches and we thought we’d bring peace to the world,” Shay said. “But it’s not possible.”

How is it going in Ukraine? President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the front lines in Zaporizhzhia on Monday, meeting with troops, local leaders, and the mayors of some other occupied cities in the region. He said negotiations with Russia stood at “level zero.” In a D-Day memorial speech in Normandy, France, Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Kyiv is experiencing the same horrors that French citizens experienced in World War II during the Nazi occupation. “Let’s not those who lay here be the last witnesses to a time when our allies come together to defeat tyranny,” Milley said.

Dig deeper: Read Maryrose Delahunty’s report on the “Ghost Army” soldiers who helped deceive enemy troops before D-Day.