RUSSIA MARKS SOVIET TRIUMPH IN WW2
Putin says West has forgotten lesson from history, vows to win Ukraine war
RUSSIA yesterday marked the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War 2 as relations with the West spiral deeper into crisis over the advance of Russian troops against Ukraine’s Westernbacked forces.
Vladimir Putin, who rose to power just eight years after the Soviet Union broke up, will speak at the Victory Day parade on Red Square though there will be less military hardware on display than in parades before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Putin now casts the war as part of a holy struggle with the West, which he says has forgotten the role played by the Soviet Union in defeating Nazi Germany and the lesson that neither Napoleon Bonaparte nor Adolf Hitler could defeat Russia.
“I want to bow to our heroes, the participants of the special military operation, to all those who are fighting for the Fatherland,” Putin said as he was sworn in for a new term as president on Tuesday.
The 71-year-old Kremlin chief promised victory in the war, where Russian forces have been advancing against Ukrainian forces despite hundreds of billions of dollars in aid from the United States and its allies.
Ukraine and the West say Putin is engaged in an imperial-style land grab and have vowed to defeat Russia, which controls about 18 per cent of Ukraine, including Crimea, and parts of eastern Ukraine. Russia says the lands, once part of the Russian Empire, are now again part of Russia.
WAR?
The Soviet Union lost 27 million people in World War 2, including many millions in Ukraine, but eventually pushed Nazi forces back to Berlin, where Hitler committed suicide and the red Soviet Victory Banner was raised over the Reichstag in 1945.
Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender came into force at 11.01pm on May 8, 1945, marked as “Victory in Europe Day” by France, Britain and the United States.
In Moscow, it was already May 9, which became the Soviet Union’s “Victory Day” in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45.
Parades are taking place in major cities across Russia’s 11 time zones. The Moscow parade begins at 0700 GMT, though Russian media said there would be less military hardware this time.
Unlike some of the parades of the past, there will be no leaders from the West.
Russia said ambassadors of “unfriendly” countries — broadly the West and those who support Ukraine — had not been invited to the parade.
Present will be the leaders of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Cuba, Laos and Guinea-Bissau.
In Ukraine, Russian missiles struck infrastructure overnight and there were several drone attacks on Russian territory.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine publish reliable data on the number of men they have lost in the war, though Western intelligence estimates put the total number of killed and wounded in the hundreds of thousands.
Russian officials warn the Ukraine war is entering the most dangerous phase to date — Putin has repeatedly warned of the risk of a much broader war involving the world’s biggest nuclear powers.
The crisis has deepened in recent weeks: US President Joe Biden signed off on US$61 billion in aid to Ukraine; Britain said Ukraine had the right to strike Russia with British weapons; and French President Emmanuel Macron has refused to rule out sending French troops to fight Russian forces.
Russia responded on Monday by announcing it would practise deployment of tactical nuclear weapons as part of a military exercise after what the Moscow said were threats from France, Britain and the United States.