Serious debate needed about Putin

THE question asked in this letters page about Vladimir Putin needs serious debate. Sadly, if the letter published yesterday is part of the alternative history of the world. I really don’t know what strange history books the writer reads.

The Second World War is indelibly etched in all people of the world’s consciousness. People should not forget that Stalin’s USSR signed a non-aggression treaty with

Hitler and shared with Hitler the conquered country of Poland, that before the World War he and the USSR allowed the German military to test their equipment and practice warfare away from western eyes.

It wasn’t just Russian losses in the Eastern Front, it was people from all the States of the USSR. If the armies didn’t willingly move forward the Secret Police were there to shoot anyone who appeared in the least reluctant to go to certain death.

Russia certainly did ensure ‘friendly regimes’ surrounded her by ruthlessly ending any trace of democracy; Hungary and the Prague Spring both spring to mind. It seems that apologists for Putin want us to forget millions of people like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn condemned to the Gulags.

“So, Russia finally said enough is enough” and invaded a country at peace and prospering and destroyed it at a whim from Putin, employing all the tactics employed by Hitler and Stalin in World War 2 including genocide.

Putin’s speech marking the end of World War Two shows how much he is willing to lie and avoid the truth like a plague to reconquer all those countries that were under the Soviet cosh for decades.

Stuart Eels Chippenham