Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said that May 9 will remain a red letter day in Ukraine.

"In our Ukrainian calendar May 9 is and will always remain Victory Day, a day as red as these poppies that symbolize the memory of the dead," he said at a Saturday ceremony at the National Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War at which conscripts of the presidential regiment and the brigade of guards of the General Staff took their oath.

"Conditions have appeared for marking Victory Day in our Ukrainian reference frame," he said.

"We will no longer celebrate the day according to the Russian scenario which implies the cold-blooded use of our Victory Day for advocating an expansionist policy with regard to neighbors, for keeping them in its [Russia's] orbit, for reviving the empire," the president said.