THE LIES.. THE TRUTH
»»Putin puts on fake show of force at WWII parade »»Troop losses limit march as invasion hell laid bare
RUSSIAN troops paraded tanks and missiles in Red Square yesterday as the bodies of comrades killed in Vladimir Putin’s invasion lay rotting in Ukrainian streets.
The President addressed just 9,000 soldiers in Moscow to mark Russia’s Second World War victory over the Nazis, compared to 14,000 last year.
He has lost 26,650 troops during his 75-day invasion of neighbouring Ukraine, and many of their families are unaware what has happened to their loved ones.
Bodies were being swept aside across south and east Ukraine as Moscow’s commanders cleared the way for their Victory Day pomp.
Sources said Putin’s Red Square ranks had to be bolstered by police officers, railway troops and even spooks in uniform.
Well over 100 Russian warplanes have been shot down since the invasion began on February 24, perhaps accounting for the lack of a huge and victorious fly-past over Moscow.
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace accused Putin’s forces of “mirroring the fascism and tyranny” they fought more than 70 years ago.
And he called for Russian generals who have acted on Putin’s wishes to attack Ukraine to face court martial.
Russia expert Bruce Jones said: “Russia has struggled to fill its ranks, as is seen by the number and categories of personnel in the parade. This is as a result of the losses the Russian armed forces are suffering. This was a less lengthy parade and the lack of a large fly-past was noticeable because although it was blamed on poor weather, it was a bright day.”
Putin told the parade his aim was to rid the region of “Nazi filth”.
However, it is his troops’ Nazi-like atrocities in Ukraine which war crimes investigators are picking over evidence of – with more than 9,000 registered already.
Putin told troops: “You are fighting for your motherland, its future. For Russia, For Victory, Hurrah.”
He made no mention of the rapes, murder, torture and industrial horror his forces have deployed against innocent Ukrainian civilians.
Nor the huge pits filled with the bodies of men, women and children, hurriedly piled into mass graves by relatives given half an hour at gunpoint to bury them.
In Bucha, north west of Kyiv, we saw bodies being exhumed from a pit of around 100 corpses – men and
women of all ages, many shot in the street, then piled on top of each other.
A man aged 77 told us he begged an angry 20 year-old Russian soldier with “dead eyes” to stop beating him in the street, leaving him with a limp.
And we met the son-in-law of disabled grandmother Svetlana Mykolayivna, 77, who was shot dead in her home by Russian troops. Andrei, 52, said: “She just put her light on as she heard a noise. They shot her dead.”
Putin blamed Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine on western policies, claiming
was necessary to ward off potential aggression. And he brazenly drew parallels between the Red Army’s fighting against the Nazi troops and the Russian forces’ action in Ukraine.
He said his invasion was needed to avert “a threat that was absolutely unacceptable to us”.
Victory Day is Russia’s most important holiday and is celebrated with military parades and fireworks across the country. Some expected Mr Putin to switch from calling his attack on Ukraine a special military operation to acknowledging it as a war, but he made no shift in rhetoric.
The Kremlin has focussed its action on Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland known as Donbas, where Moscowit backed rebels have been fighting Ukrainians since 2014. Forces have pounded the port city of Mariupol, from which evacuees arrived in Zaporizhzhia 140 miles to the west on buses yesterday at a processing area for internally displaced people.
Russia also displayed a deadly array of military hardware yesterday, including the latest Tornado multilaunch rocket system. It can fire barrages of missiles containing cluster munitions or thermobaric warheads up to 50 miles. It is already recorded as having killed hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers and wounding many more in a strike from across the border in Russia in 2014.
These were followed by nuclearcapable Iskander (NATO SS-26 Stone) mobile hypersonic ballistic missiles with a range of more than 300 miles.
Also on display were Buk M-3 (NATO SA-27 Grizzly) anti-aircraft missiles of the kind judged by Dutch courts to have shot down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.
The parade concluded with a drivepast of mobile RS-24 Yars (NATO SS-29) multi-warhead intercontinental nuclear ballistic missiles, which have a range 7,500 miles and can be fired from mobile launchers, underground silos and specialised trains.
■ Russia’s ambassador to Poland Sergey Andreev was pelted with red paint as he went to lay a flowers at the Soviet military cemetery in Warsaw.
Russia has struggled to fill ranks as can be seen today BRUCE JONES EXPERT ON RUSSIAN AFFAIRS