VE Day live: UK and Europe hold ceremonies to mark 80 years since end of second world war in Europe
Thanksgiving service at Westminster Abbey begins after two-minute silence
The thanksgiving service, marking the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) at Westminster Abbey, has begun after a two-minute silence was held across the UK.
King Charles, Queen Camilla and the Prince and Princess of Wales are in attendance, along with UK prime minister Keir Starmer.
There are 1,800 guests in attendance at today’s service, including royals, veterans, politicians, officials, guests and other public figures.
Key events
Earlier, during a thanksgiving service at Westminster Abbey, UK prime minister Keir Starmer gave a bible reading and wartime favourite The White Cliffs Of Dover was sung by Zizi Strallen.
Actor Nina Sosanya read a letter written on VE Day by Janet Thornton to her teenage daughters Renee and Pippa, who were away staying in Dorset.
She told them it was the “most important day of your life and of the world”, and urged them “enjoy yourselves, shout, scream, sing, wave flags, eat, drink, lemon or barley water, and make it a day of rejoicing”.
Thornton’s grandson Colin Vallance-Owen was in the abbey to hear his grandmother’s words.
He told the BBC:
My grandmother wrote the letter on VE Day itself. She was away from her daughters. They were in Sherbourne, so she wrote it on VE Day. She seemed to have got the moment.
She felt very very seriously that this was a very, very important day for all of us.
He described Thornton, who died in 1986, as “absolutely tiny with a huge personality”, adding: “It’s a bit of history really.”
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has criticised Russia, saying “victory and true remembrance are not with those who hold ‘parades’ but with those on whose side the truth is”.
Russia commemorates VE Day with a huge military parade on 9 May, because when the ceasefire that ended the second world war came into force at 11.01pm in Berlin on 8 May 1945, it was already the following day in Moscow.
In a post on X, Zelenskyy wrote on Thursday:
In attempting to appropriate Ukraine, Russia is appropriating another nation’s memory and distorting history.
That is why not only today, on the Day of Remembrance and Victory over nazism, but always, it is worth remembering: Ukrainians made their great contribution to that victory. They stopped a global evil with their own blood.
Because more than 8 million Ukrainians fought against nazism – not only as part of the Soviet army. Tens of thousands served in the Allied armies. Hundreds of thousands fought in partisan units and resistance movements.
In that war, we had no rear – all our land was one continuous frontline, a staging ground, an open wound. Every city, every village suffered. Every home and every family.
And we will not surrender this memory to a new, Russian nazism – just as we will not surrender our present to it. Victory and true remembrance are not with those who hold ‘parades’ but with those on whose side the truth is. Let us honor our contribution to the fight against evil. And our present, in which we are fighting it once again.
Here are some more images from today coming in via the newswires:
Scotland fell silent to remember its wartime heroes, with a series of events taking place around the country to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day.
At the Scottish parliament and at public spaces including train stations, a national two-minute silence was observed at midday.
Holyrood presiding officer, Alison Johnson, said:
We honour the generation that gave so much to secure our peace and freedoms.
We owe it to them to strive for that peace, to remember and to encourage future generations to remember.
Party leaders also marked the anniversary in a series of tributes before first minister’s questions.
John Swinney paid tribute to his uncle Cpl Tom Hunter of 43 Royal Marine Commando, who died on 3 April 1945 in Comacchio, Italy. He was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for offering himself as a target to German guns in order to save his own troop during the battle.
According to the PA news agenvy, the first minister said:
I think of my uncle, Thomas Hunter, killed in Italy protecting his comrades 35 days before the end of the war.
Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay said:
None of us here can truly appreciate the selfless sacrifice, duty and bravery of the greatest generation who fought and died for our freedom.
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said:
We remember those who gave everything for the fight against fascism, the greatest tyranny we have ever faced.
Scottish Green co-leader Lorna Slater said: “We cannot be complacent in the face of growing threats of fascism, international violence, hatred and oppression,” while Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton added:
We must rededicate ourselves to the promise of that peace and its furtherance for our children and theirs to come.
A service of thanksgiving took place at Glasgow Cathedral at 1pm, with guests including representatives from the military, veterans’ organisations, emergency services and religious groups.
Members of the Royal British Legion, the Royal Air Forces Association, and the armed forces charity the SSAFA took part in the service, along with their families.
Archbishop of York warns ‘good’ that came after VE Day is ‘under threat again’
Stephen Cottrell, the archbishop of York, has warned the “good” resulting from the second world war is “under threat” as King Charles led the UK in commemorating the 80th anniversary of VE Day.
Cottrell paid tribute to “those whose sacrifice made our victory possible” against Hitler’s Nazi regime, and said he is praying again for “peace in Europe” amid Russia’s three-year invasion of Ukraine, reports the PA news agency.
He spoke during a service of thanksgiving to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day, with a number of veterans among the Westminster Abbey congregation featuring the king, Queen Camilla, Prince and Princess of Wales and prime minister Keir Starmer, who read the lesson.
In his address, the Cottrell said:
Today, on this 80th anniversary, we give hearty and mighty thanks for those whose sacrifice made our victory possible. We pray again for peace in Europe.
We salute those who were so committed to the ideas and ideals they fought to uphold, that in the postwar era rebuilt the world to reflect those beliefs.
From the National Health Service to the United Nations itself, we strove to build a world that shows how we belong to one another and have responsibilities to each other across boundaries of class, race and nation.
Those first outpourings of joy on the first VE Day led to something good, because in our opposition of what was worst in us, we discovered what was best.
All this good is under threat again in our world today.
Europe’s major nations including the UK are planning on stepping up spending on their armed forces in response to the changing world order ushered in by US president Donald Trump. Russia is seen as a growing threat in eastern Europe and there is economic uncertainty for many nations coming to terms with the US’s new tariffs.
Deborah Cole
Berlin for the first time observed a public holiday on VE Day, as Germany’s political leaders gathered in the Bundestag lower house of parliament for the central ceremony marking what many Germans call a day of “liberation” from the Nazi dictatorship.
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier told the chamber Germany must never heed the call of extremists trying to shake off the burden of responsibility for the second world war and the Holocaust.
“It was Germans that unleashed this criminal war and dragged Europe with it into the abyss,” he told the assembled guests including newly elected chancellor Friedrich Merz, who earlier laid a wreath at a memorial for victims of war.
“It was Germans who committed the crimes against humanity of the Shoah. And it was Germans who were unwilling and unable to throw off the yoke of the Nazi regime.”
It was the first major ceremony on VE Day in the Reichstag building, its walls still covered in graffiti left by Red Army soldiers during the Battle of Berlin, since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The ambassadors of both Russia and Belarus were barred from participating.
“Tomorrow we will see the victory parades in Moscow in the name of liberators from back, supposedly justifying a war against Ukraine today,” the speaker of the Bundestag, Julia Klöckner, said.
“What an abuse of history! Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol. And again girls and women fall victim to sexual violence, used as a weapon of war.”
Steinmeier acknowledged the role of Soviet forces in defeating Nazi Germany, noting that at least 13 million Red Army soldiers, including Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians and others, lost their lives in the fight, and as many civilians.
“But the liberators of Auschwitz have become new aggressors,” he said. “With the war against Ukraine, Putin left our European security order in rubble. It was the source of our hope that we had learned the lesson from the horrors of war once and for all.”
King Charles, the queen and the Prince and Princess of Wales and other members of the royal family met veterans in the nave at the end of the service.
William was seen placing his hand on one veteran’s shoulder as he chatted to the former serviceman who stood to speak with the prince and Kate.
The princess crouched down to meet one woman, holding her hand as she chatted to the veteran, who was wearing medals and sat in her wheelchair.
King Charles was seen deep in conversation with a number of veterans, bending close to speak to them.
Winston Churchill’s great-great-grandson Alexander Churchill, 10, lit the VE Day 80th candle of peace during a service at Westminster Abbey today.
The youngster, dressed in a suit and tie, stepped forward and made his way up the steps in front of the altar, where he was handed a flame to light the large cream church candle.
Six young members of the congregation handed out white roses, carried in wicker baskets, to second world war veterans seated in the nave.
Veterans were seen to nod and say “thank you” as they received the symbol of peace.
Alexander later read a prayer for “peace in Europe and across the world”, and for the “sacrifice of those who have gone before us to be honoured in the defence of liberty, justice and peace”.
Kate Connolly
During an ‘Hour of Remembrance’ in the Bundestag, to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of the war, which has just concluded, German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier sharply criticised Russian president Vladimir Putin, for what he called his “historical lies”.
Speaking to a full house of MPs including the new government of chancellor Friedrich Merz, as well as Holocaust survivors and other specially invited guests, Steinmeier condemned the Kremlin’s insistence that its war against Ukraine is a “continuation of the fight against fascism”.
“Putin’s war of aggression, his campaign against a free, democratic country, has nothing in common with the fight against National Socialist tyranny in World War II,” he said.
He praised the contribution of the Red Army in the liberation of Germany from National Socialism, which included, he said “Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians” (Georgians, Poles and others) all of who fought under it, as well as for liberating the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz, in January 1945.
“At least 13 million of these soldiers and twice as many civilians lost their lives,” he said. “The Red Army liberated Auschwitz. We will not forget any of that.”
But, he added, with his “historical lies”, Putin was “whitewashing the imperial madness, grave injustice and the most serious of crimes.”
He said it was painful to acknowledge that the “liberators of Auschwitz have become the new aggressors”.
The ambassadors of Russia and Belarus were not invited to the memorial service in the Bundestag, just as they have been excluded from other ceremonies around Germany to commemorate the end of the second world war.
Here are some images of the two-minute silence being observed in the UK:
UK prime minister Keir Starmer gave a bible reading at the service of thanskgiving at Westminster Abbey, before the congregration sang I Vow To Thee My Country.
The lyrics were written by Cecil Spring Rice in 1918, the year the first world war ended.
Here are some images coming in via the newswires of the thanksgiving service taking place at Westminster Abbey in London now:
A national two-minute silence was held at midday in the UK. King Charles, Queen Camilla and the Prince and Princess of Wales stood motionless around the Grave of the Unknown Warrior in solemn tribute to those who fought for freedom during the second world war.
The 78 veterans amid the congregation joined in the moment of reflection as they observed the silence.
Peers in the House of Lords bowed their heads. A number of members of the upper chamber, including the lord apeaker, are in attendance at the thanksgiving service at Westminster Abbey.
King Charles and the Prince of Wales have laid wreaths of seasonal flowers, which would have been in bloom in May 1945, at the Grave of the Unknown Warrior.
King Charles did so on behalf of the UK and the Commonwealth, and Prince William for the veterans and the wartime generation, with 99-year-old Ken Hay, who served in the 4th Dorset infantry regiment, at their side.
Thanksgiving service at Westminster Abbey begins after two-minute silence
The thanksgiving service, marking the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) at Westminster Abbey, has begun after a two-minute silence was held across the UK.
King Charles, Queen Camilla and the Prince and Princess of Wales are in attendance, along with UK prime minister Keir Starmer.
There are 1,800 guests in attendance at today’s service, including royals, veterans, politicians, officials, guests and other public figures.
The thanksgiving service in Westminster Abbey will begin with a two-minute silence at 12pm BST (11am GMT) which will also be observed across the country, to remember Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender, which took effect on 8 May 1945.
A group of young people attending the VE Day service at Westminster Abbey said they were there to challenge stereotypes about their generation, reports the PA news agency.
Georgina Heron-Edmends, 19, Henry Hughes, 21, and Sophia Kaur Badhan, 24, are from Youth Collaborators and are working on a report to influence government strategy on young people.
Kaur Badhan said:
We think it’s really important for young people to be invited to this today.
There’s been some coverage in the media suggesting we aren’t interested in VE Day or don’t know what it is – we’re here to challenge that.
We’re very interested – we think it’s really important and it’s a privilege to be here.
